


Among Dragons

by evadne



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Genderswap, Mind Manipulation, Reference to sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:49:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 57,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evadne/pseuds/evadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson has acquired the power to bend the fabric of reality, and she’s not the only one. The media are talking about superheroes and Sherlock is determined to find their secret identities. Meanwhile, Mary Morstan plots a murder, Irene Adler tries to seduce a police officer, and there are signs (castles glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, the shadows of apples under bare trees) that all this may be the least of their worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Femlock Big Bang, with three gorgeous drawings of Sherlock from send-bees at the start of chapters 2, 3 and 9.

**i.**

 

Ten. Sherlock could not possibly last any longer than ten more in-and-out hard shoves before she came. And then the inelegance of the situation would overcome her, and she would have to stop. Pity, that. It would be good to see Jo ache, feel it for days, _bleed_ even, but this time it clearly wasn’t going to happen.

 

Jo was sentimental afterwards, clinging to Sherlock as though she might disappear. And she might. Because Jo was ordinary, wasn’t she? Intellectually, at least. Whatever else one might say about her – because yes, she was brave, and self-contained, and had all sorts of interesting qualities that hadn’t been apparent at first – her powers of observation and analysis, the force of her intellect, were above average, but well within the normal range. Nothing special. That had to count for something.

 

Maybe it didn’t count for quite enough, though. Maybe this would last, these feelings of Sherlock’s would stick in place, and Jo would keep mattering. And that, surely, could be good. Surely, _surely_ it could be made to be an advantage?

 

They had fallen into bed post-case. Jo had whispered things, sentiments Sherlock clearly had too much dignity to return. They’d kissed, and so on. Foreplay. Then sex, Sherlock fucking Jo hard from behind with a strap-on, making her bleed [ _no,_ not blood, she wouldn’t do that, not without conversation and contemplation and safewords and _consent_ ]. Making her scream, then, just scream, pleasure and fear Jo would never admit to feeling, not even to herself.

 

And with every thrust Jo’s fragile, ordinary body shook, and her skin cells trembled on her dull surface, and began to flake away. When Sherlock came, John gasped, and crumbled to dust.

 

All right. No. There must be better stories than that. It must be possible to tell a story both comforting and believable, believable enough almost make it real.

 

Try again.


	2. Chapter 2

****

 

**i.**

 

‘You can’t keep just ignoring Mycroft’s texts,’ John says.

 

‘Factually incorrect,’ Sherlock mutters, tossing her phone aside. Then John sees her muscles shift, her body reposition itself subtly in preparation for high drama mode. ‘How am I supposed to find a case,’ she demands, ‘if these masked idiots keep stopping criminals before they get a chance to do anything interesting?’

 

John curls deeper into her chair, and leans her head against the back, half turned to it. She smiles into the fabric, knowing Sherlock will hear it in her voice. ‘They’re doing a pretty good job, for idiots,’ she says. ‘And that was very imprecise by your standards. Only one of them actually wears a mask on any regular basis.’

 

Sherlock huffs. John sneaks a glance at her. She’s in solid drama queen mode, supine on the sofa with her arms sprawling over the back and down the side, as though lifting them would be simply an unbearable amount of effort. The long, elegant lines of her body come up sharp against the blurring silk folds of her dressing gown. There’s something pleasing about the contrasts and calculation involved in Sherlock’s appearance, or at least so John has always thought; even when she’s being a twat, John likes to look at her.

 

Now, for example, she’s sulking, and fed up, and hasn’t left the flat in two days. So she’s not wearing a designer suit, or heels or four hundred quid brogues, and her short hair is squashed on the sofa but still making an attempt to spread everywhere, as opposed to being blow-dried or waxed or gelled or whatever she does to it normally to get it to hover in place, swept back dramatically from her forehead. In theory, she looks a mess.

 

In practice, Sherlock just can’t help herself. Even now, on her downtime, with no one to impress but John, Sherlock is performing. She slobs about in crimson silk and thin skin-soft ocean blue cotton. She flops onto the sofa as if she no longer cares about anything, but still ensures that her hair falls just so, a delicate little curl straying tenderly across her forehead. It is absurd, and makes John feel immensely fond.

 

She realises that she’s staring, but doesn’t bother to stop. After all, Sherlock stares at her all the time.

 

‘Metaphorically masked,’ Sherlock says. ‘They all conceal their identities. Although –‘ she flurries upright in a handful of swift sharp motions, limbs flicking back towards her body as if summoned there – ‘not for much longer.’

 

Living with Sherlock Holmes you learn, or you try very hard to learn, how to control your body language. Even as John feels the tension hit her body she forces herself to relax again as much as possible. ‘Yeah?’ she says. She’s about to ask why, but realises before the words leave her mouth. ‘Sherlock, _no_. Jesus. Can you even imagine what it would be like for them if the media found out who they were?’

 

‘They haven’t left me any choice,’ Sherlock says, loftily. ‘I need to _work_ , Jo, you know that, and if they’re going to take away all opportunity for me to do so then I’m going to have to investigate the only puzzle left. Which is them. Anyway, it’s not as though I’m planning to call the papers once I’ve worked it out.’

 

John keeps herself still and neutral. ‘How are you going to work it out?’ she asks.

 

‘They give things away all the time,’ Sherlock says. ‘Just look at what they do. Take “Nightmare Girl”, for example.‘ She pauses to grimace, expressing a sentiment John frankly shares; the media nicknames are ridiculous.

 

‘What about her?’

 

‘However powerful these “Fablers” are, they can’t stop every crime. They’ve got their favourites, and Nightmare Girl has a soft spot – or, actually, a brutally hard spot – for leaders of organised crime and men who abuse women. Icara is less specific in the crimes she targets – anything where the strong are clearly picking on the weak will do – but for a masked vigilante she’s remarkably keen on due process; she almost always injures her targets as little as possible, and usually delivers them to the police. And the Bakerloo Witch…’

 

Sherlock pauses for effect, and John, briefly, fails. Her head presses a fraction harder into the chair, and her back stiffens. Sherlock can’t _see_ John’s back from where she is, but probably there’s some tell that’s visible to her. Once again, John forces softness back into her posture, and prevents herself from nagging Sherlock to continue; that would seem too eager when normally these days she just lets Sherlock finish her dramatic pauses in her own time.

 

It doesn’t come naturally, this dissembling, stuff she’s picked up as anti-Sherlockian defence mechanisms. And though she thinks of it – has described it, jokingly, to Mary – as a natural consequence of sharing space with the world’s only consulting detective, she knows, really, that she hasn’t always done this. When she first moved in Sherlock’s penetration was brilliant and delightful and extraordinary and sometimes distressing and unsettling, but John never had a thought of trying to hide from it. That started sometime in the months before Sherlock died; although at the time, of course, John was thinking of them as the months after Irene Adler. And then Sherlock was gone, and came back not seeming to understand that nothing was ever going to be the same now.

 

‘She’s the most interesting of the lot,’ Sherlock says. ‘She takes on a range of crimes, but she particularly gravitates to situations in which she and the victim are hopelessly outnumbered. She _doesn’t_ have a problem with injuring her opponents, but every time without fail she’s done just enough to put them out of action and then tended to their injuries before leaving. Expertly, too.’

 

Embarrassingly, John feels a little glow at that, and her mind blanks a bit; she can’t think of how to stop it showing. Fortunately, Sherlock’s already deep into plotting mode. ‘I’m going to start with her,’ she says. ‘With the homeless network’s help it should be easy to stage something that’ll get her attention.’

 

John sighs. ‘There’s no guarantee she’ll show up,’ she says. ‘Even superheroes have nights off. Or there might be a more important crime happening somewhere else. Look, why don’t you just take whatever Mycroft’s case –‘

 

‘She’ll show up,’ Sherlock says. ‘Look at her genre of power. She appears as an actual _knight_ half the time. What’s going to be better than a helpless maiden set upon by thugs?’

 

 _Maiden?_ John almost says, raising her eyebrows and smirking. With any other friend, she would, though admittedly she’d never be having this conversation with any other friend. But she can’t make that joke with Sherlock, because she hasn’t got the faintest idea what kind of nerves she might be touching. For a moment, she feels intensely, irrationally aggrieved that after all this time she still doesn’t know. But there are so many things she doesn’t know about Sherlock, and this is one of the least important.

 

‘It’s raining out there,’ John says, instead, grimacing. A misstep: Sherlock must know that John’s not gone _that_ soft, that a bit of rain wouldn’t ordinarily bother her, and would only seem disheartening if connected to an adventure she’s not particularly keen on anyway.

 

Sherlock, however, attributes it to altruism. ‘I don’t know why you’re so much more concerned for the Fablers’ wellbeing than mine,’ she grumbles. ‘You don’t even know them. I’m _suffocating_ with boredom, you should show some pity.’

 

John snorts, mostly so she doesn’t sigh again. It’s harmless enough, this stupid plan; clearly she can be pretty confident that the Bakerloo Witch isn’t going to fall for this particular trap. But then Sherlock will be disappointed and have to endure the indignity of being wrong when really, of course, she was nothing of the kind: ordinarily a story like the one Sherlock’s putting together would exert a pull intense enough to drown out everything else. But knowing it’s fake turns it into an entirely different story, one which her powers don’t seem to have any interest in.

 

 _I should just tell her_ , she thinks, though she wonders whether Sherlock would even believe her if she did. She lets the argument play out in her head for the hundredth time. _I’m lying for no reason, or for the pettiest of reasons. I need something for myself, need some distance, can’t get that tangled up again. There are better ways of doing that. No, there aren’t._ Then, clearly, the thought that sometimes follows: _I’m never going to get distance. I should have got out. Travelled the world or married someone and definitely not moved back in when she asked me._

‘Fine,’ John says, shrugging. ‘You’re not to tell anyone what you find out, though.’

 

‘Yes, fine, I promise,’ Sherlock says, in a tone that clearly indicates that John is the most annoying person on earth.

 

‘Tell me when we’re going,’ John says, something that would be a meaningless bit of conversation filler were she talking to anyone else but with Sherlock is a genuine reminder. Or possibly a plea.

 

‘Not we,’ Sherlock says. ‘I’ve got to be alone, or the story won’t work. Can’t have the protector role already filled.’

 

Oh. Against all reason, John is vaguely – hurt? Disappointed? Flattered? She’s had to get better at words and emotions since the stories got into her head, but Sherlock continues to endlessly provoke reactions John has no name for.

 

‘I could hover nearby,’ John offers. ‘Help you catch her if she turns up.’

 

‘She will turn up,’ Sherlock says confidently, and John suppresses a disloyal smirk. ‘And no. We don’t know how her powers work; it may be that she could detect that I was being watched over. I’ll text you if I need you.’

 

John nods. For an incomprehensible split second she’s back on that tube, the sound of creaking metal roaring wildly in her ears, Sherlock babbling in her head and her own voice there too, louder: _Sherlock needs me_. Something she’d never expected to get a chance to think again.

 

‘Why would you need me?’ John says, echoing words Sherlock almost certainly doesn’t remember. ‘It seems safe enough. I might want to go to bed.’

 

‘Of course,’ Sherlock says, a stiffness suddenly present between them. It can come from nowhere these days, and vanish with as little explanation. ‘Do sleep, if you need to.’

 

‘I won’t sleep,’ John says. It sounds like an accusation. She amends it: ‘I mean, just in case. Very embarrassing for you if you get turned into a toad or something.’

 

Sherlock smiles, but her mind is clearly already drifting away, planning her next move. She certainly doesn’t need her whole brain to engage in conversation with John, though: ‘Can’t text if I’m a toad,’ she points out. ‘Anyway, isn’t that more fairytale than fantasy?’

 

‘Grey area,’ John says, then worries that came out too pat, too expert. ‘I’m sure you can hop on the keys or something. Or just wait for the story to end. They all do, eventually, don’t they?’

 

Sometimes, of course, they don’t end until after their characters die. But it seems unnecessary to point that out. The Bakerloo Witch isn’t going to be there tonight, and if she were she wouldn’t let her stories harm a hair of Sherlock’s miraculous head. Besides, story-Sherlock is probably immortal. She might not have powers, but she can rewrite stories as well as any of the Fablers: look what she did to Jem Moriarty’s Reichenbach fairytale. To Irene’s twisted blood-and-betrayal romance. Turning stories inside out is what Sherlock _does._

 

Sherlock is known to be indestructible. John has no reason to worry.

 

(But when Sherlock leaves, heading out alone into the dark, John remains awake with a hand on her gun and a hand on her phone. Reason never had very much to do with it. Less than ever now.)

 

**ii.**

 

Primarily, it’s exhausting. It was always at least fifty or sixty per cent exhausting, but the ratios have shifted, and now it drains and drains without reprieve. Any one element of it would be taxing on its own, but together they are catastrophic.

 

Sherlock classifies these elements, labels and dispassionately

[of course not dispassionately, never that with this. Not without passion, then, but momentarily apart from passion. Extrapassionately. The additional meanings of it are satisfying too. Part of her can step aside and examine the rest from a shaded balcony in the palace, but after a time it will shudder, and slip, and fall all the faster for the distant height it managed to reach before.]

analyses them, it’s laughable, as if they were really elements, as if she could list them according to their properties and the weight of their contents and colour-code them. As if she could learn through simple, pleasurable experimentation, how to combine and manipulate them and make something she could use.

 

‘Fine,’ Jo says. Sherlock watches her shoulders rise, fall, an almost unconscious movement. Jo shrugs often; perhaps Sherlock should calculate how often. As always, it makes her want to press her head very slowly against first one shoulder and then the other as they move. She would like to experience everything Jo’s body does as closely as possible. How can that be categorised? Is that affection or desire? The whole exercise is absurd. Everything is absurd, lately. ‘You’re not to tell anyone what you find out, though.’

 

Jo cares. About these strangers and the possibility of their being hassled by journalists. Or possibly she thinks she should care. Or it might be an oblique way of reprimanding Sherlock for something entirely different. Deliciously, Sherlock can’t immediately tell. The possibilities fizzle about her, sparking trains of thought.

 

She promises, and extrapassionately examines the response this evokes in her. It’s marvellously domestic, this, Jo extracting permanent responsibilities – for clearly the promise is that Sherlock will _never_ reveal the Fablers’ identities, at least not unless Jo says she can – in the course of casual conversation. It heats her. She wants

[Jo to pull promise after promise from her trembling body

{I would tremble, under the circumstances. I can’t know this, and I never guess, but if she touched me while taking a promise I would shudder, if I didn’t break that is, if I didn’t stop}

until every thought in her head points in the same direction, until her whole existence is inextricable from Jo’s, and the obligations that currently she wears like dangling weights become her entirety, and so something much more than a tedious interaction of force and mass and memory]

to run from it. Take it back, burn it down, tell Jo that she doesn’t _make_ promises. To wait and break it, casually, cruelly, and prove it retrospectively a lie, invalidating any other promises made in the process. She won’t. She couldn’t bear it. Perhaps she could bear it, but she won’t.

 

Sherlock promises, and, deal made, is able to continue, and to explain the distressing necessity of leaving Jo behind. Bringing her is not an option: it’s clear from the study Sherlock has made of the Bakerloo Witch’s actions that she has some sense of story, of the way things are shaped. Jo is a saver of lives, and the person who saves Sherlock, there are few deeper-piercing facts around than that one. Sherlock doesn’t want or need anyone else to save her, but tonight it has to appear that she does.

 

Jo, as expected, is offended by this, and in trying to smooth her the conversation becomes damaged and sore. Sherlock aches in sympathy with it. Naturally being left has associations for Jo now that make her angry. And, predictable too, her anger doesn’t make it out of her body; it rarely does, although when it does it blasts through Sherlock’s skin and leaves her reeling in desperate misery, intense to the point of pleasure. This time, as often, it is sandpapered down in Jo’s throat and emerges as guarded irritation. She asks terrifying questions ( _Why would you need me_?) to which she thankfully appears not to expect answers, and then tugs even the irritation away again and softens herself. It’s extraordinary. Agonising. Sherlock cannot help but be fascinated by how many things are painful now. She missed Jo too deep and too long and the missing is buried in her flesh and goes on and on despite the evident absurdity of feeling it now.

 

More absurd: she has a case, of sorts, she has a story, has _work_ , and look at her. She needs to focus, and on the right things. Who to use? Wiggins. Mary? No, Jo wouldn’t like that. Mary might. No, no Mary. Wiggins will know who else. The plan is simple. Dull, actually. Time was she’d have thought of something better. But Sherlock has studied the Bakerloo Witch, and in this instance needs to think like her. Simple is better.

 

Leaving is also agonising, and continues to be so as she makes her way to the location she agrees with Wiggins en route. It’s normal and unsurprising, this particular hurt. She does know what she’s talking about, she has experienced a reasonable number of different kinds of pain. Presumably a lot of them are normal. Presumably Molly Hooper, for example, and Sally Donovan, and Lestrade, have known what it is to be separate from someone when they’d rather not be. Nevertheless, she doesn’t know where to put the feeling: she has rooms for feelings like this but they are public rooms, unlocked, not meant for self-study. Her cross-referencing system is usually excellent, but she stores the things she feels apart from things felt by other people. It’s been obvious for some time that that was probably a mistake, but to admit it, to tear the palace apart and rebuild –

 

Something’s wrong.

[A Jo thought, Sherlock doesn’t think like that herself. _Too-tall shadows_ or _Wiggins has excellent timekeeping_ would have been her first thought. But Jo, with her extended proximity, has had more scope to unwittingly modify Sherlock than anyone had had before for a long time, and inevitably her thinking patterns have corrupted Sherlock’s a little.

{As though it were inevitable. It wasn’t. I fought it off at first. I searched the palace thoroughly every night for contaminants and removed them. But then I was alone, which was correct, the default, I’d been waiting to go back. I knew I would miss her, but I missed her and the cities I was killing people in were all beautiful and I _missed her_ , it was so extraordinarily simple a feeling, she wasn’t there and I wanted her and I didn’t know how I was going to bear it. I’d known, I suppose,  that I wouldn’t know. But I’d assumed that, finally allowed the space to think, I would figure it out.}

It became more than a little when, in a small grey house in Berlin, Sherlock found herself comparing a member of Moriarty’s web to a Bond villain, and immediately retreated to the palace to scrub the thought apart. Then she realised how little she had left, and instead of scrubbing she carried the flaws and smears as gently as she could to a room at the top of a flight of familiar stairs, and buried herself in them for all the minutes she had spare.]

No one’s here. At least, Wiggins isn’t here. Someone –


	3. Chapter 3

****** **

 

**i.**

 

John catches her breath. It feels as though she hasn’t stopped running since she got the garbled text, evidently just Sherlock pushing whatever keys she could in her pocket. In fact, since Sherlock decided that she needed to be reasonably far away from John for the story to work, John’s been in a cab for ten minutes, but her heart hasn’t stopped racing. What possessed her to let Sherlock go running off without her?

 

She does her best to calm down, just enough so that she can focus and feel for stories. She’s still clumsy at this, but in this instance there’s no wait, no frantic searching, it shouts at her out of the dark. Sherlock’s been captured, some enemy or other following her here, taking out the group Sherlock had arranged to have fake attack her and then waiting to take advantage of Sherlock being alone in a dark alley. Which she never should have been.

 

John follows the story to the house where they’re holding her. It’s not far, and a moment’s concentration tells her they’re in the basement. A moment more tells her that there are a lot of them. She curses, quietly. She’d rather gun than story, every time; the powers are unpredictable and have the capacity to hurt her and Sherlock as well as the kidnappers. But this drastically outnumbered, the powers are her only chance.

 

She focuses, draws the story up from where it’s straining at the surface of the world. She feels words bubble towards her, emerging from the crumbling red bricks in the house and the cracks between the paving stones and the pressure of her feet against the ground.

 

_Jonh’aya had been travelling for hours now, making her way to the Stone Kings’ lair._

John paused and spared a glance down at herself. Jonh’aya was apparently at least fifteen years younger than John, with bright golden hair that she wore in a plait that curved over her shoulder and reached her chest, and gleaming plate armour. She carried a helmet under one arm and held a sword with the other.

 

John dropped both, and hurriedly cobbled together a story about a kind old woman who had once saved Jonh’aya by hiding her from enemies and who had given her a pouch of magic hairpins to take on her journey. The story dragged when John tried to pull it forward – there were too many plot holes and bits of it kept slipping into them – but she managed to tug it into reality, and a moment later she felt pressure on her neck and discovered a necklace with a small pouch attached. She pulled it off, and used all but one of the hairpins inside to pin her braid into a coil flat against her head. Then she put on the helmet and picked up the sword.

 

The house had transformed into a cave. It was dark inside, but _the hairpins were enchanted to emit bright light in dark places_ and she had kept one back to hold up in front of her. She had the helmet’s visor up for now, but she would have to shut it once she got close, and then her vision would be very limited. But she had no choice: Sherlock would only need a glimpse of her face to know who she was. From studying her characters in the mirror, John knew that they were often – though not always – younger and prettier than her, but always kept the basic shape of her features.

 

 _The Stone Kings lived deep in the maze of_ – not a maze, God no please, John thought – _in the twisting tunnels that_ – no – _in the deepest part of the caves, down several flights of crude stairs carved into the rock by earlier adventurers, who had never been seen again._

Right, John thought, relieved. That would have to do. Make it too easy, and the story would crumble due to lack of tension. She strode towards the back of the cavern. This was where it would get hard, she knew: the story would want her to face a challenge at each level, and if she didn’t keep focus it would start taking whatever life it found – insects, stray cats, possibly even germs – and transforming them into flesh-eating ogres, and demons that would demand you solve a riddle before you could pass and God knew what else. She didn’t have time for that today. Sherlock was trapped somewhere below, her kidnappers transformed into whatever Stone Kings turned out to be –

 

_\- from an alternate dimension, raiding the human world for life, draining their victims and leaving them as mere statues –_

No, John thought furiously. She shoved the story hard back towards non-existence, and when that didn’t work hammered desperately at its edges, trying to find a weak point she could recode from. It was no use, though: the story had fully taken hold. The only way to get rid of it now was to get to the end.

 

She broke into a run, and winced at how loudly the armour clanked. _Her armour was enchanted too, to be lighter than silk and make no sound._ She felt the weight ease off, and the sound died away.

 

The story continued to rattle off in her head as she raced for the stairs. _Of course, Jonh’aya was not precisely an adventurer. She wasn’t here seeking excitement, or fortune, but something far more important._

A rat snapped at her leg, and then began to grow to enormous size. _The caverns had once been full of dangerous creatures, but the Stone Kings had drained them long ago,_ John thought; now it was a statue of a giant rat, frozen with its teeth bared. She ran on.

 

_There was a small kingdom not far from the Stone Kings’ lair, the cave where they had entered this world and returned to between hunts. It had a queen who ruled over it, and her younger sister the princess, who was named Serylocis. This princess was also a powerful sorceress, bursting with exactly the kind of raw power the Stone Kings most desired. And she was fatally curious. About everything._

John reached the first flight of stairs and threw herself down it four steps at a time. It seemed to go on forever, and she thought hopefully _the stairs were unexpectedly short, the Stone Kings’ lair perhaps less deep than Jonh’aya had expected_ , but the story shattered immediately, lacking foundation. John increased her pace again. If someone – if Sherlock died in the story, she would still be dead when it ended. Some hope lay in the fact that Sherlock’s kidnappers, while their physical bodies would have transformed, would still have their own minds: they would not think of themselves as Stone Kings, or know that they had the power to drain life.

 

_After Jonh’aya came to the small kingdom and joined the royal guard, she and the princess she guarded grew close, and eventually Jonh’aya fell in love with her charge._

 

John blinked. That story had hit reality so fast she hadn’t even felt it coming, easing in through the gaps between what could be and what was as naturally as any she’d ever summoned. It had come too fast for her to even try and recode it. Strangely unsettled though it made her, she was stuck with it now.

 

She reached the bottom of the stairs, and held up her hairclip, searching for the next staircase.

 

 _The princess wished to study the Stone Kings_ (of course she fucking would, John thought) _and left the palace in the dead of night to seek them out. She was knowledgeable about many strange things (though ignorant about many ordinary ones), and by studying faint traces of magic residue in the soil she was able to find their lair, something no one had ever done._

There. John set off at a run again.

 

_Jonh’aya was the first to realise Serylocis had gone, and the first to realise where she was likely to be. She set off from the palace at once. She didn’t know how to trace the magic in the ground, but she knew more mundane forms of tracking, and she was able to work out the path the princess had followed. But the most dangerous part of her journey was yet to come._

The second stairway was, to John’s relief, a lot shorter than the first, and she cleared it in two leaps. She had held off the story until now, but the third stair was bound to be guarded. In the event, however, the guardian was a living goblin statue _drained of life by the Kings but then reanimated with a little fraction of their stolen power, not truly alive but capable of motion and response_ which she easily defeated with her sword _enchanted by the princess to sear through enemies like fire._

She made her way silently down the steps, and paused to take in the scene at the bottom.

 

Sherlock was tied to a stone chair, wearing a flowing dress, a cape, and a silver circlet studded with deep crimson gems that winked in the tiny light emitted by John’s hairpin. Her hair was long, curls spilling freely down to her waist, and like John she looked much younger than in reality. She was surrounded by five toweringly tall men with pale grey skin and long white tongues that flickered repeatedly from their mouths.

 

Said mouths were moving, clearly attempting to talk, but no words were coming out. This was a common problem people sucked into stories had: they couldn’t say anything that the story couldn’t assimilate, and until they figured that out they often wouldn’t get to say anything at all.

 

Sherlock, of course, had figured it out. ‘I understand that you have heard of my reputation as a sorceress,’ she said, glancing down at the pattern of tiny stars spiralling across her dress, ‘but I can’t help you with your problem.’

 

The story folded her words effortlessly into itself. _The Stone Kings, Jonh’aya realised, wanted more than to drain Sherlock’s life. First they wished her to unlock the gate to the place between realms, so that they would not be restricted to the human world for hunting, but could roam through all worlds at will._

‘Solve it and we’ll let you go,’ the man nearest Sherlock said, managing quite by chance to speak in character. He was, John saw, holding a tiny sphere glittering with coloured lights. In reality, it was probably some complex code that they wanted Sherlock to solve in order to hack into somewhere important, or gain secret government information. John wished she could say this was the first time someone had thought it was a good idea to kidnap a consulting detective to try and get them to help with committing crimes.

 

‘We both know that you have no intention of letting me leave here alive,’ Sherlock said.

 

The man furthest from Sherlock gestured anxiously about him. ‘We need to hurry,’ he said. ‘The Witch is obviously somewhere around here. She’ll be coming for us.’

 

He, of course, meant the Bakerloo Witch, but the story frantically restructured to say that _the Witch was a creature from another realm, who hunted the Stone Kings just as they hunted humans. No one knew if she meant good or ill to humanity, but the Kings quaked at her name._

Wonderful, John thought. She sincerely hoped she could end this before the story decided it was time for the Witch to turn up. She pulled down her visor, took a deliberately loud step down from the final stair and held her hairpin up high.

 

‘I’ve come for this woman,’ she said, disguising her voice as best she could. She tossed the hairpin to the ground and held her sword with both hands, steady. ‘I don’t need to hurt you, if you’ll just untie her.’

 

She watched them calculate, and her heart sank. She could almost see the moment they decided: _hey, she might have powers, but they’ve only given her a sword, and we’ve still got her drastically outnumbered._ She would need to think of a plot twist, and quickly.

One of them looked hesitant, though, inasmuch as it was possible to tell from his distinctly non-human countenance. As the one nearest him stepped forward, he reached out a hand. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he hissed. ‘This is the fucking _Witch_ we’re dealing with.’

 

 _Oh, yes_ , John thought. _Oh, thank you._

She felt the glow before she saw it, a warmth spreading down her skin and turning it silver.

 

_The Witch had no corporeal form, but had the power to possess human beings, and dwell unnoticed at the back of their minds for months or years, taking a little of their strength but not enough to damage them, growing in power until she was able to seize control of the body she inhabited and use it to suck the life from Stone Kings. Then she would use the drained power to vanish, leaving her human host behind, and travel across the world in energy form to seek out another suitable mind to inhabit._

She saw the men step back, and then felt herself begin to lift off the ground.

 

_And standing in that cavern, facing insurmountable odds, Jonh’aya remembered. She remembered moments of inexplicable exhaustion, a strange feeling of being watched when she was completely alone, and an odd sense, sometimes, just as she was drifting off to sleep, of power blistering beneath her skin._

‘Yes, I am the Witch,’ _Jonh’aya said her voice deep and strange with power and echoing inside her helmet,_ ‘and my touch is death to you.’

 

She darted forward through the air, dropping her sword, and grasped the hand of the man nearest her. The colour instantly began to leech from his skin, and she _felt_ his life force pour into her. The others ran for the stairs, and she made no attempt to stop them. As soon as they were gone she released the man and let him drop to the floor. Unconscious but, she was pretty sure, not dead. Checking for certain would have to wait until she finished the story; she couldn’t touch him now without killing him.

 

‘How did you know I was here?’ Sherlock asked, while John picked up her sword again and began to carefully cut Sherlock’s ropes. ‘Do your powers lead you to potential stories? How much do you know about how it works?’

 

The story was weakening, this close to its end; Sherlock was being allowed to say things she’d never have got out a few minutes ago. John didn’t dare speak; with Sherlock this near she was sure she’d betray herself somehow. And yet it seemed wrong, somehow, to ignore Sherlock altogether.

 

As she dithered, the story trembled softly in her head, and shifted.

 

_The enchanted hairpin lay on the floor, emitting just enough light to see by. But its powers were limited, and as Jonh’aya released the princess from her bonds, the hairpin’s glow faded and then died. The cavern was plunged into absolute darkness._

The story was nudging at John; she could feel it pushing at her. Slowly, she removed her helmet, and dropped it to the ground. Then she knelt, reached out in the dark for Sherlock’s hand and took it in both of hers. She turned it over, and pressed her mouth to the palm. At that she felt Sherlock freeze beneath her, and wondered what the hell she was doing, but the story was still curling insistently around her, and so she held Sherlock’s hand there against her mouth for a few moments, until she heard Sherlock sigh gently, and knew she was about to speak again.

 

This was an ending, for sure; John could feel it. That left her a few minutes at most to get out of here. She rose hurriedly, gently releasing Sherlock’s hand, and ran for where she remembered the stairs being.

 

She heard Sherlock getting up behind her, following and calling, ‘Wait! Just a few questions –‘ and ran faster. The cavern was beginning to shift around her; there was a broken TV in the corner now, and the ground was getting softer, becoming damp carpet. Soon the different levels would converge, and John would be herself, in the basement of the dilapidated red brick house with Sherlock. She tore up the next two flights of stairs and raced for the exit.

 

She just makes it. When she turns to look back at the cave she finds herself looking once again at a house with stairs leading down to a basement, and a glance down at herself confirms that she’s once again in jeans and a jumper with greying shoulder length hair in a ponytail. It’s always both a relief and a comedown, returning to her own body after a story.

 

She takes one slow breath, then pulls out her gun, storms down the stairs to the basement, and kicks in the door. ‘I’m looking for Sherlock Holmes, and if you don’t –‘ she cuts herself off, and attempts a puzzled frown as she takes in Sherlock walking towards her past the broken television and ancient furniture.

 

‘Sherlock, you’re OK,’ John says. ‘I thought – your text…’

 

‘You thought right, but someone else beat you here,’ Sherlock says, gleefully.

 

‘What?’ John says, deepening the puzzled frown. ‘Who?’ She’s briefly concerned she might be overdoing it, but she needn’t have worried. Sherlock could believe pretty much any level of stupidity from her.

 

‘The Bakerloo Witch,’ Sherlock says. ‘Turned the place into a cavern and then sucked the life force out of one of my captors. The others ran for it when they saw that.’

 

‘Oh,’ John says, injecting relief into her voice. ‘Well. Thank God for her, then. Bet you were pleased to get to study her up close.’

 

‘It’ll be invaluable,’ Sherlock says, happily. Then she tilts her head, considering. ‘It’s odd, though – I told you I’ve been studying them all, and the Witch _always_ tends to her opponents’ injuries after she disables them. This time she just left. At a run, too: she was obviously in a hurry to get away.’

 

‘I’d better have a look at her victim, then,’ John says, striding over to the unconscious man, and hoping that Sherlock doesn’t pursue that line of thought any further. To her relief, the man has a clear pulse and is breathing as she would expect. Hopefully no lasting story damage, and Sherlock will be able to question him and use him to track down the others. John calls the police, and she and Sherlock sit on the sagging sofa and wait for them to arrive.

 

Sherlock relates her encounter in greater detail, including some of what happened before John got to the bottom level. She reserves the most detail for a description of the Bakerloo Witch that’s decidedly complimentary by Sherlock’s standards, and leaves John feeling strangely warmed.

 

What Sherlock _doesn’t_ mention is the fact that the Witch knelt before leaving and softly kissed her palm. John waits and waits for her to bring it up, and ends up still sitting there after Sherlock’s got up to talk to Lestrade, relieved and annoyed and pretty confused as to why she cares at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**i.**

She opens the door, shuts it, and hangs her coat on the hook. It's dark outside, getting lighter. She'd hoped to shake her old sleep cycle, and mostly she has, but sometimes she wakes at one or two desperate for air, for lamplight shadows and the particular kind of quiet only found on empty city streets at night.

 

It's three now. There's chill and dust from outside still lingering on her, but a few more minutes to adjust and she'll be her indoor self again, clean and warm and comfortable with her surroundings. She doesn't know which is more real. Sometimes she thinks it would be nice to have someone to talk to about it, to ask which they think, or if that's maybe the wrong question altogether. But the only people she could have asked are gone now, and she probably wouldn't have asked them anyway.

 

Warmth returns, along with her name, and her fingers running through her short blonde hair, feeling it rub against her hands. As always, feeling these things, knowing them hers, sends a trembling rush through her like little else she's experienced. All this time running, and apparently what she really wanted was home ownership and a best friend, a steady job and a name to keep, or at least to come back to.

 

That analysis doesn't quite square with the night wandering, but she's at home to contradiction. She has a home now, after all, a stable address to which she can invite whatever commotion she likes, knowing she's in control here.

 

The phone rings. She tenses, looks up sharply - reacting, gratifyingly, exactly as a nurse with sensible hair might be expected to react to a three a.m. phone call. It makes her think all sorts of things might be possible. A spouse, children even, late nights worrying about affairs and job security and teenage parties, and never once about the price of the past.

 

But that future, if she wants it – does she? – will require the price to be paid. It ought to be her that pays it, but she's desperate to avoid that. Perhaps she deserves it, but after all, he undoubtedly deserves it too.

 

It's probably him calling now. She picks up the phone.

 

‘Mary?’

 

‘Hi,’ Mary says. ‘Is that Janine?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Janine says. ‘Sorry to call so early love. Bit of a situation with Jo.’

 

‘Don’t worry, I was awake. Is she all right?’

 

‘She’ll be fine, but Molly needs to do a bit of light stitching, and the morgue’s locked up for the night. We’re near yours. I don’t suppose you’d sacrifice your kitchen table?’

 

Mary says yes, then puts the phone down and makes herself a green tea. The thought of having the two of them – Jo and Janine – under her roof at once is almost more than she can process. She isn’t sure what she’ll feel, or what part of her will be feeling it. The possessive warmth she feels towards Jo and the roiling helplessness that Janine induces in her are both difficult enough to deal with on their own.

 

Molly Hooper, at least, should be a grounding presence. She’s a fascinating girl, the sort of person that gets overlooked and that Mary makes it her business to pay careful attention to. Not so much because she might be useful – she could be enormously useful, but Mary’s determined that Janine will be the last person she uses. No, it’s more that Molly deserves to be paid attention to, and Mary does, in general, believe that people should get what they deserve. With some exceptions.

 

She can watch Molly, when she can’t stand to watch the others.

 

Mary deliberately avoids thinking about the fact that Jo’s injured, enough to need stitches, until they arrive. They’ll need her calm; no point in upsetting herself.

 

When they come through the door Jo is walking almost unaided, Molly offering just one unobtrusive arm. Janine is behind them, hair ruffled with the wind outside, a coat hastily pulled on over baggy pyjamas and ballet pumps on her feet. The hunger Mary feels looking at the knots in her hair and the bare tops of her feet is painfully at odds with the feeling she gets from seeing Jo hurt. She’s an expert at harmonising contradictory impulses, but there’s nothing she can do with all this. Nothing but wait it out.

 

When, at last, Jo is safe and laughing at her own carelessness, and Janine’s calmed enough to exclaim about having gone out dressed like this, Mary settles, a little. She makes them all tea, tells Jo off for getting herself hurt again, and allows herself to just graze the edge of harmless flirtation with Janine.

 

‘What was it this time?’ Mary asks, once they’re all comfortably arranged around her sofas, sipping tea.

 

‘School bullies,’ Jo says. ‘Serious ones, year eleven or twelve probably, and they tricked this kid into going over to one of their houses after school, said they wanted to make friends, and then…it started with mocking and at the point I sensed it it was just turning violent. So then, OK, you know the stories always sound stupid when you describe them, but I was a witch – which is quite unusual actually, for all that the media calls me one – but yeah, I was from a hidden town in the mountains inhabited solely by witches. But I was curious about the world outside – this was all backstory, obviously, none of this actually happened – and ran off, and came across this village where there was a boy who was exhibiting signs of magic and being persecuted for it, and I saved him, but as I was flying away with him someone on the ground shot me in the stomach with an arrow.’

 

‘Are you sure your powers are really that suited to fighting crime?’ Mary asks. This is a frequent source of worry for her. ‘Half the time they seem to give your enemies better weapons than you.’

 

Jo shrugs. ‘I could never have sorted out the number of people there were today without powers. Could’ve pointed a gun at them, but what if they’d called my bluff? I wasn’t actually gonna shoot them for beating someone up, however disgusted I was with them. Besides, most of the time the thing about the story is it wants me to win. Downside is it also wants me to get injured and miserable and run into lots of trouble along the way, but it doesn’t – usually – want to kill me.’

 

‘Usually?’ Janine says, raising her eyebrows.

 

‘There’s exceptions, but they’re rare, and normally you can tell pretty quick, and get out.’ She looks at Mary. ‘I’d have thought yours would be the same.’

 

‘You know I don’t use mine,’ Mary says. ‘Only the once, after we first got them.’

 

Jo shakes her head at her to indicate _I think you’re crazy but hey, suit yourself._ She’s not to know that Mary’s powers turn her into a horrible parody of exactly who she doesn’t want to be.

 

‘How am I going to explain this to Sherlock, is the question,’ Jo says, indicating her stomach, where the neatly stitched wound now nestles beneath a vest top and a striped jumper. ‘She’ll definitely know.’

 

‘It looks like a stab wound,’ Mary says, thinking out loud. ‘Just tell her you were on your way home from the surgery and saw a boy getting beaten up – ah, but I suppose it’s the timescale that’s the issue. Your battle with them must have taken hours.’

 

‘It was an unnecessarily drawn out story,’ Jo agrees. ‘Yeah, that’s the problem. I could say I got knocked out…’

 

‘Keep your lies simple,’ Mary advises. Jo has no idea of the effect she has on people, or on certain kinds of people, of what saying that would do to Sherlock. ‘She might want you to get checked out for concussion if you say that. No, don’t tell her that Molly treated you; say you went to hospital and they insisted that you stay overnight – they almost certainly would, with an injury like that. You can stay the rest of the night here and go home at eightish.’

 

‘Or you could tell her the truth,’ Molly says, so quietly no one but Mary hears, but Molly doesn’t repeat it.

 

Poor Molly. So good at keeping secrets that those with large-scale lies to maintain naturally seek her out, and so uncomfortable keeping them. And she’s right, of course, but wouldn’t have been listened to even if she’d spoken louder. Jo has no intention of telling Sherlock anything.

 

It’s interesting to see this kind of lying from Jo. Generally she’s truthful, except when pushed too relentlessly for information, and even then she generally deflects rather than lying outright. And this lie is being kept up for such curiously twisted emotional reasons that the thought process is a hard one for Mary to penetrate. In a way, it reminds her of the first months after they met. When Mary could never say _What did you feel for Sherlock_ and Jo would occasionally lie about it anyway, unprovoked: _By the way, I know you’re probably thinking…just so you know, it’s not like I’m some kind of widow or anything. Sherlock and I weren’t…just in case you were wondering. We were never like that._

All right. Not strictly a lie. But ignoring an awful lot that, it gradually became obvious, was very important. Then again, perhaps it doesn’t count: Mary doesn’t think Jo was ever really aware that she wasn’t being honest.

 

Jo had interviewed Mary for the position of part-time nurse, and it had been immediately obvious that she was holding in something enormous. She was doing it well, a perfect parody of normality, but Mary had been trained, long ago, to spot weakness, and Jo was a terrifying hollow shell of concealed weakness. She didn’t know Jo and so couldn’t tell what the weakness was: it could have been sadness, it could have been a bitter hatred of her job, or an addiction; she could have been concealing an affair. All Mary knew at that point was that Jo had secrets, and that they were hurting her.

 

It drew Mary, though she’d questioned the wisdom of allowing it to, and brief research had indicated that Jo was the frequently photographed yet almost invisible colleague of the recently deceased ‘hat detective’. A woman now branded as a fraud, though Mary knew otherwise: no one she’d known in her old life had ever met Moriarty, but jobs came in that could be traced back to her, one way or another. Mary had always had standards of a kind, demanded that a death be justified on one side of the scales, even if the other side was weighted down with the target’s grieving family and their own justifications for their actions, so she’d rarely done Moriarty jobs, but there had been one or two. Sherlock Holmes certainly hadn’t invented her.

 

Curious to know more, Mary had asked Jo out to dinner the day she’d started the job. Jo had been visibly disconcerted, far more so than the invitation merited, and was jumpier over dinner than Mary had ever seen her. The papers had made sly hints about Jo’s relationship with Sherlock Holmes, and so Mary chalked Jo’s discomfort up to the fact that this was late and candlelit enough to feel something like a date, and she was probably feeling guilty and confused and disloyal. Mary would have analysed it more if she hadn’t had her own troubles to consider.

 

These troubles stemmed from the fact that she was enjoying herself, enormously.And, more interesting: she felt like herself, the self she was meant to be. She could never, she saw now, be entirely Mary Morstan at home alone in her pretty little house, despite how carefully she’d decorated it; Mary Morstan was a caregiver, a listener, and an amusing conversational partner, all of which required outside participation. The blossoming friendship opened her up, made her receptive to being filled with all the things that she was supposed to – _wanted_ to – consist of. She made jokes, wittily displayed exaggerated confidence in a way that came across as almost self-deprecating, expressed concern for their patients and almost glowed with the joy of feeling the personality seep into her, become genuine. For the first time in months, she felt real.

 

Jo calmed as the meal went on, perhaps, Mary thought, adjusting to the idea of considering dating again – after all, over a year had passed since Sherlock Holmes’s death – and as they walked down the street Mary stopped them, put a hand on Jo’s arm, and kissed her.

 

It was only later, after a great deal more kissing, after Mary had stripped Jo of her endless defensive layers and kissed lower and lower till Jo groaned helplessly and covered her eyes with her arm, that Mary realised she’d got it wrong. The sly newspaper hints had been, in the tradition of newspapers, gossipy speculation rather than fact, and Jo’s feelings for Sherlock Holmes had been a great deal more confused than Mary had realised.

 

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ Jo had said, hastily pulling on clothes, though not because she was leaving – clearly she wanted to run from this conversation, but she wouldn’t, Mary saw, she was steeling herself.

 

‘You’re straight,’ Mary said, trying to help her along. ‘And you’re unhappy.’

 

‘I don’t know what I am,’ Jo said, and Mary heard the sheer anguish behind that, though there was little in the voice to betray it. This was a woman who had probably always known who she was, or known it for a long time, a woman who had been more or less the same person for most of her life. That was captivating. Jo was captivating in general: a brittle layer of strength concealing a vast chasm of weakness, with strength again beneath that, an inviolable ball of it at her core. And Mary felt sorry for her too, felt that she deserved a chance to work her stuff out.

 

They’d had sex five more times, with long weeks of seemingly uncomplicated friendship in between. Once Mary, as an experiment, let a little of the skill she wasn’t really supposed to have out and, sitting in another restaurant, casually read the people around them for information, delivered it to Jo, and then struck up conversation to prove herself right. If the papers had been even half right then she wasn’t at Sherlock Holmes’s level, but she was as impressive as she could be, and throughout she maintained a manner a little more dramatic, a little dryer than Mary usually displayed. Jo had practically dragged her home, pushed her against the wall, scraped teeth down her neck, pushed a hand inside her and made her come hard and fast, head buried in her shoulder. Then shuddered, said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and run for the door.

 

Mary had conducted no more experiments after that. She found that Jo’s pain was distressing, something to be avoided at all – no, be honest with yourself at least, when you can– at most costs. The other times they’d fucked had been softer, Jo seeking comfort in human warmth. Mary had been happy to oblige. It was strange sex, because Mary was vaguely attracted to Jo but was primarily in it for the friendship, and it was painfully obvious who Jo really wanted, although less obvious, of course, to Jo herself. At some point the sex stopped, and their friendship grew up without them having ever really talked about it again.

 

And then came the powers, not long after Sherlock’s return from the dead. World-shaking, unexplained. They went to sleep ordinary and woke to a thundering awareness of the patterns shaping themselves around them. It was, perhaps, easier for Mary than the others since she’d learned to look for those patterns, to treat everyone including herself as characters in a plot she had to make sure she was in charge of. But she’d wanted to stop doing that. It seemed a cruel irony, particularly given the revelation that occurred next, when she’d mentally reached for a pattern and touched it, and found that within a very specific set of parameters she could manipulate the stories.

Why this had to happen within cliché and genre was as much a mystery of the rest of it, but that was how it was. Jo could have as many knights and witches and goblins as she liked, but robots and spaceships were Sally’s territory, and Mary was limited to skulking men in hats and herself as a caricature of her own history, in suits or long black dresses slit at the side, endlessly firing bullets into the dark. Impossible to explain to the others that she wouldn’t use her powers because to do so would simply be to play through images that already scraped the edges of her dreams more nights than not.

 

She wishes they knew who Nightmare Girl was; it would be good to talk to her, to find out if her armies of demons and bloody-fingered ghosts ever turn back on her, if she ever dreams herself into a story and wakes to find the room watching her with red eyes blinking in its corners. Alternatively, Mary could talk to Irene Adler, but is afraid that Adler might see more than Mary wanted her to. Mary has read her website and her interviews, and recognises cause for a great deal of wariness. Undoubtedly there have been agents and assassins alike who’ve gone to Irene Adler for intelligence and found she took more than she gave.

 

‘You should get some sleep,’ Mary tells Janine and Molly. ‘You look half wrecked. Do you want to stay over too? I’ve only got one spare room, but there’s a sofa bed, if you don’t mind sharing.’

 

She could’ve afforded a bigger house than this, even in London, with her retirement pot. But as a part-time nurse, part-time teacher of English as a second language, it wouldn’t have been plausible. Even this is pushing it, but she decided, after all this time running, that the transition to stability would be a lot easier somewhere comfortable.


	5. Chapter 5

**i.**

 

‘You haven’t eaten for fifteen hours,’ Jo said. ‘I’ve been counting.’

 

‘Fifteen hours is nothing.’

 

‘It’s too long.’

 

‘Before you,’ Sherlock said, a trace of venom in her voice, ‘I used to go for days without food or sleep. I wasn’t a slave to my body. You’re _weakening_ me by forcing me to give into its demands the moment it voices any sort of protest.’

 

Jo pushed the box of takeaway towards her. Sherlock squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again, and reached for the chopsticks. She ate in mutinous silence, and refused to meet Jo’s warm, pleased expression.

 

(Yes. Good. This is good, this could happen.)

 

Sherlock chewed, and swallowed, her brain slowing, her body reduced to a state of pitiful humanity. Base physical processes, digestion, animalistic in their simplicity. She kept eating, and when the box was empty, she began to bite at Jo’s flesh. Jo kept smiling through all of –

 

No, no, no. Stick to realism. It’s not really your forte, that’s the trouble, especially now.

 

Yes. Especially now. The nature of this power is such that what’s real and concrete is rather beside the point. As long as what it _means_ is real.

 

That’s the answer, then, isn’t it? The answer to the problem that comes after the final problem. You shouldn’t be here, but here you remain, and the problem of Sherlock Holmes is all you’ve got left. Solve it and you’ll have nothing, but fail and you’ll hate what you have. And with the answer right in front of you, how can you resist?

 

Don’t go to them. Make them come to you.

 

**ii.**

 

‘It’s

[Hospital soap scent on Jo’s fingers (Sherlock has written separate blog posts on the overlooked importance of smell as a sense and cataloguing brands of soap, where they are used and who by), from the soil on her shoes she was in Limehouse, a man outside the window is waiting by Speedy’s for his friend? Girl/boyfriend. Why? Suit but his hands he doesn’t wear a suit to work, not funeral (facial expression), not party (wrong time of day, wrong sort of place), new partner, hair says boyfriend probably although over-reliance on stereotypes – no it is a boyfriend, small plastic shopping bag he only bought one thing and the shape of the bottle is clear through the – could still be a girlfriend but the odds are stacking, he’s guarded, he feels exposed, wouldn’t watch himself like this meeting a girl, Jo’s t-shirt riding up a fraction, her softness her stitches her muscles – no - - - blog on different types of glass and how they slightly distort what you see so little you might never notice – don’t – look – don’t look – his boyfriend is late because he’s having an affair (hair again, shoes, small plastic shopping bag is a gesture of desperate optimism), she pulls her t-shirt down again, adjusts her hair, the texture of her fingers against her hair, I could envy her for knowing exactly how her own hair feels against her fingers, it would never be exactly the same for me even if I could touch – does that matter? It’s as though the gap gets wider all the time, as though everything is a reminder of it, the texture of chapped lips on my palm and ropes sliding off my body, beep text fuck _off_ Mycroft, this ceiling has been painted three times in the last ten years, beep of the phone fuck _off_ the second time by a man who – oh just shut up, don’t you ever shut up, just –]

getting intolerable again,’ Sherlock says.

 

‘Lestrade did call with a case,’ Jo says.

 

‘Barely a three.’

 

‘Are you still sulking because your plan didn’t work?’ Jo asks. ‘That was days ago.’

 

It’s too stupid a question to answer, but she can’t help answering it in her head. _That I could live with. The problem is that the plan did work, more or less: all right, there was more danger than planned, which is presumably what you mean, but I lured in the Bakerloo Witch. And then I stood in a stupefied mist and called her name without moving while she got away, all because I felt her mouth on my skin and it made me think of – of things I haven’t felt – dreams – suppositions, theories, but I believe that they’re reliable and –_

 Can that be right? Yes, the Bakerloo Witch is intensely brave and a strange contradictory fusion of harm and healing. And yes, her lips had felt exactly as Sherlock has always imagined that – but that would mean – surely Jo isn’t capable of –

[Late nights and injuries with fragile explanations. If her story is true she wouldn’t have had time to wash her hands when she stumbled in would she, and she would have got out of the hospital the second they let her. But she works at a surgery, and so does – Mary, yes – Sherlock has been stupid, assuming she knows how things stand when she should know very well and thought she did know that nothing is as it was and Jo cannot be predicted as she could. Reeling, the weight of lies of kisses, she can’t explain that but everything else fits. The smell of the soap is a rebuke now. She can’t think here, not with the soap and the t-shirt that could slip upwards again at any moment.]

 

‘I’m not sulking,’ Sherlock says, making her voice lofty, and Jo quirks a smile. It makes Sherlock want to stay and let her thoughts remain hopelessly disordered, but – ‘I’m planning.’

 

‘Oh dear,’ Jo says, amused. ‘Should I be worried? Yes, of course I should, I don’t know why I’m asking. What are you planning?’

 

‘Irene Adler,’ Sherlock says, wanting to leave less and needing to more than ever. ‘Or should I say _the Woman_.’

 

Jo groans. ‘I preferred it when you were pretending she was dead,’ she says, and then winces. One of her curious qualities is her ability to forget her own wounds: she’ll lift things that make her shoulder scream for days afterwards, and, apparently, make jokes about faked deaths. It makes Sherlock want to spend her life just watching Jo exist, but she hates it too, seeing Jo in pain that could be avoided, if she’d just be careful with herself. But then, of course, if she were careful with herself she’d be someone else. The inevitability of it can calm Sherlock or distress her, depending on the circumstances.

 

‘The Fablers have shown before that they can detect each other,’ Sherlock says. ‘Irene must know the identities of the others.’

 

‘What makes you think she’ll tell you the truth?’ Jo demands. ‘Lying is pretty much what she does, right?’

 

‘And yet she’s the only one of them without a secret identity,’ Sherlock points out.

[Jo hates liars in theory and is drawn to them in practice. Sherlock had thought it was a question of opposites attracting. She’s missed something enormous, normally a cause for intense self-rebuke and a kind of twisted up excitement, but now it only makes her horribly afraid.]

 

‘They’ve got good reason to hide,’ Jo says, and yes, how Sherlock could have missed it before – she’s angrier than she’s letting on. If it were really someone else she was defending, she’d be much more open about it, she’s too cautious. ‘Irene’s only told people so she can make money off her powers, the others are doing some good with them. And calling herself “the Woman”? Come _on_.’

 

‘It’s no stupider than “the Bakerloo Witch”, is it?’ Sherlock asks.

 

‘The others didn’t _choose_ their names,’ Jo says. She doesn’t miss a beat; there’s nothing to indicate the truth. Sherlock is impressed, and panicky with hurt. She’ll go now, before she makes one of the many wrong moves she can feel gathering in her head.

 

‘I can tell when Irene’s lying now,’ she says, confidently. Jo huffs, quite rightly; Sherlock can’t and never could. ‘Even if she lies, the nature of her lies is bound to give something away.’

 

‘Fine,’ Jo says. ‘But don’t expect me to come, I don’t want to go anywhere near her.’

 

‘Suit yourself,’ Sherlock says. She was counting on that. Once she’d just have breezed out without telling Jo where she was going, but now she can’t help but notice Jo’s expression when she’s left, can’t help but think of the last glimpse Sherlock had of her distant face before the hospital tipped back and away and the solid world disappeared.

 

Perhaps she really will go to Irene, though. That will mean she hasn’t lied, which is preferable these days, and Irene might have advice for her. Sherlock won’t like it, but it could be useful anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

**i.**

 

There’s not much that beats days like this. Sometimes it’s complicated, a kid backed into a corner lashes out at the world, and Sally turns up and hopes like hell that she’s doing something more than just kicking him back. Those days she and Lestrade drink themselves quiet and come into work early the next day.

 

But the Waters family were clever, and careless about harming people, and motivated by a pretty uncomplicated kind of greed. Lestrade won’t get much credit for catching them and Sally none from anyone apart from Lestrade herself, and later that will rankle, but today it’s just been triumph and photographers, she hasn’t slept properly for weeks helping plan this and she must have looked a mess in the photographs, but God, this really is hard to beat.

 

They make a point of going to the pub at times like this, so they don’t solely associate drinking with failure, though associating it with work in general probably isn’t any healthier. It’s four hours since they rolled in, laughing at each other’s jokes, unable to tell whether they were funny or not but only how happy they both were. Lestrade – Geri, after this many drinks – is leaning back in her chair, properly relaxed for once. The dim pub light casts some of her grey hair shadow-coloured and some of it bright silver.

 

‘We’re fucking brilliant, we are,’ she says, toasting Sally, and Sally will definitely drink to that. She could make a cutting comment about how look, they can solve a case without Sherlock Holmes, but frankly she feels too good right now to bother bringing her up. And comments like that are more trouble than they’re worth now: Geri used to take them in the spirit they were meant, a fairly good natured kind of grumbling and a gentle reminder that Sherlock’s position was ridiculously irregular. Things are a bit more fraught, now, both amongst their team and in Sally’s own head.

 

‘But we knew that,’ she says instead, once she’s taken a drink.

 

‘The Waters gang didn’t,’ Geri crows.

 

‘Not until they bloody well did,’ Sally says, and they toast again. Her triumph is softening round the edges, slipping into a pleasant blurriness. She’s not ready to let herself sink away altogether just yet, though; tonight she feels like crowning one identity’s triumph with another’s. There’s stories out there, she can feel them, and she’s in the mood to meet them head on. So she stays for one more drink, and then squeezes Geri’s hand in a last burst of triumph and slips away.

 

She kind of wants to tell Geri about all this, about the way her world’s opened up recently, and discuss with her the ramifications of stepping dangerously close to the edge of following the rules. But she doesn’t want to put the pressure of that kind of secret on her. And ultimately Geri is a police officer first and foremost, and might raise an eyebrow at how Sally operates. The justice of the police is a complicated and conditional thing, Sally can’t help but know that, and though she’s always believed that sticking closely to the rules is the only way to make it fair, to make it genuinely about justice, she couldn’t resist the lure of how much more she could do with this new power. So here she is: a vigilante who doesn’t kill and doesn’t break the law, who uses only reasonable force, and who generally speaking hands over criminals to the police. Except when she doesn’t, and that, perhaps, is where she hesitates to talk about it. In her strange extra life as something like a superhero she has, once or twice, made decisions that Lestrade – she’s sobering up again – would probably have understood but not, Sally thinks, have made herself.

 

No, for the time being, she’ll keep what she does to herself. Well, herself and the other Fablers, who mostly understand less than Lestrade would. Sally doesn’t get the impression that Jo, for example, is ever kept awake worrying about what it means to take justice into your own hands, or what happens to the people she fights after she’s done with them. But then she runs about with Sherlock, and Sally is pretty certain that not every criminal they find gets dutifully handed back to Lestrade.

 

She’s finally managed to find a quiet street, and can focus on what she wants from a story. Jo apparently doesn’t have that much control over her powers; they always affect the same area (experimentation has proved that this is half a mile in every direction, forming a sphere) and she tends to use whatever story comes to the surface first. She’s fairly utilitarian about it. Sally, in contrast, finds a great deal of joy in chasing and stretching the boundaries of what she can do.

 

Now, for example, she feels for stories, dismissing a few as they flutter close and finally bringing in one that she likes and letting it grow. But not too far: this story will, for the time being, affect only the area immediately around her body. She’s craving flight, but isn’t ready yet to drag anyone else into it.

 

She toys with narratives. The obvious one, of course, is to make herself straightforwardly a superhero, give herself a mask and a costume and soar unencumbered. She’s done that a lot, occasionally adding large golden eagle or moth wings as an aesthetic touch, and the media have taken to calling her Icara as a result. She thinks, for all sorts of reasons, that the name is a lazy choice. It’s also vaguely sinister, a reminder of what it is that they really want to see her do. Given half a chance, they’d be no kinder to her than they were to Sherlock. Less kind, probably.

 

But never mind them now. There’s energy running through her, currents she can direct. They can call her what they want, but here and now she names herself, every bit of herself.

 

She tries an android, flying by means of unseen electronic currents, then something more mechanical, with enormous wings in which gears turn as they beat, then an alien with silver pupil-less eyes and telescopic vision, with tiny wings all over her body. She places herself at the helm of a small spaceship, then vanishes it. Victory’s made her restless, but she’s happy to succumb to that for now.

 

‘Enjoying yourself?’

 

It’s her. Of course it is.

 

Sally swoops lower to look at her properly, though she’s not sure of the wisdom of that: Irene Adler might not be sex personified the way she thinks she is, but she’s…something. All right, attractive, she’s attractive. In an obvious red lipstick and heels kind of way, but then Sally’s never claimed to be subtle. In an equally obvious way, Irene is also dangerous, and something of a puzzle to Sally. Flirty over-intimate arch-nemeses are for people like Sherlock, and something Sally definitely doesn’t have time for, but Irene seems to have other ideas.

 

It had started a few weeks ago, when Sally had sensed a story at the other end of London, something big, and had made a beeline for it only to be sidetracked by a sudden awareness that in a small house in Putney a man was threatening his girlfriend with a kitchen knife. She’d changed course, flown as fast as she could to prevent the worst, and when she got there, she’d tried to pull a story forward. At first, she’d felt it coming towards her as she always did, and then it had stopped abruptly and she’d realised that there was already a story there. She’d hesitated, then walked into the house.

 

The people she’d come for were in the kitchen, but Sally saw now that they had the fluid, repetitive motions of non-humans given the appearance of people by the story. And the story definitely wasn’t what it had appeared to be from a distance. The girlfriend was wearing lace underwear, the boyfriend shirtless and muscular, and as Sally watched he traced the knife gently across her shoulders, leaving her unmarked. Then she kissed him roughly, wrenched the knife from him and made tiny pinpricks of blood appear on his arms. He gasped, kissed her harder; Sally backed away. She was watching ants or flies or bacteria shaped like strangely artistic pornography and she didn’t think she’d ever been this uncomfortable. She’d run for the door, and it was only the next day that she’d picked up a newspaper and seen _Largest bank robbery in six years_ and understood what the hell had happened.

 

She’d determined never to fall for a distraction like that again, and, since there was only one person who could be responsible, determined too to find out as much as she could about Irene Adler. Irene Adler who had gone public with her powers and advertised them to clients, _the Woman who can literally make all your fantasies come true._ Irene Adler who had met Jo and Sherlock years ago and who Jo still mentioned sometimes, her tone sometimes grim and sometimes simply wondering. Irene Adler who gave the appearance of being altogether amoral. Irene Adler who must have been offered a small fortune by the media to out the other Fablers, and who had remained resolutely silent.

 

Neither the plan to find things out nor the plan not to be tricked again turned out quite how Sally wanted. Adler was persistently elusive, and her schemes were different every time. Their second encounter happened just after Sally had finished a press conference. She was senior enough, and had been noticed enough standing behind Lestrade in the photographs, to do them herself now, and frankly she was better at them than Lestrade was. But they wore her out like proper work never did.

 

She’d returned to work, poring through the files she’d been collecting for two days, painstaking collections of times and dates, locations, alibis, truths, lies, business secrets and webs of connection. She loved this, even the dull bits, because the dull bits were where it all came together. She couldn’t put together someone’s life story at a glance, but she could figure out the stuff that mattered by taking each element of what she knew and studying it from every angle, and, more important still, studying the spaces between the things she knew. Feeling the slow drift of it, the moment when it began to turn in her favour and the story began to unfurl, was like nothing she could get anywhere else.

 

That week she was making sense of an enormous con, tracing it back to its source, the person who had dreamed it up. It had all the hallmarks of a single creative brain behind it. The gist of it was that high level traders had been approached – all but one of them said by a woman, but the descriptions were all different, though Sally had a theory that they were nevertheless all the same person – and encouraged to make secret investments in a company that bought and sold art. Through winks and nods, it was conveyed that the means by which the company came by the art might not be strictly legal, and that it could therefore make enormous profits. These men – they had all been men – who would never buy stolen art, had more or less leapt at the chance to take such an enormous and potentially profitable risk. It was couched in language that was familiar to them, and played on their natural inclinations. It was masterly. When they’d been informed that the company had failed and they weren’t getting their money back, some had accepted it as a bad investment, others had suspected fraud but hadn’t dared go to the police since they’d be asked awkward questions about why they’d invested, and one had been furious enough to go anyway.

 

Sally wasn’t exactly impressed, that wouldn’t be the word for it; crime never impressed her very much. Either it was born of desperation, or an equally desperate but calmer calculation of what life had to offer, or delusion, or it was like this: clever and intricate and, the way she saw it, kind of pointless in the end. A game. She wasn’t a game player by nature, though she could learn the rules when she had to, and she wasn’t normally given to admiring people who got sucked into this stuff. But there was something about this particular con that held her attention, and she was enjoying immersing herself in it, swimming through her files in search of things she’d missed.

 

Except the files were wrong. It took her a while to realise it, but the truth crept up on her slowly, and then became gradually more obvious, until she read: _Brian Lawley, first to be approached that we know of, described young woman with short blonde hair. Trader at Barclays Capital. Likes slow kisses, dappled moonlight, being pinned down. Doesn’t know it. They never do, do they? Lucky for them that I do._

She stopped reading abruptly and stood up, looked about her. She didn’t feel like she was in a story; looking down she seemed to look normal, clothes the same as they had been before. The room, too, looked normal. But the files had changed as she turned the pages, and there was only one thing that could have caused that.

 

Adler refused to materialise, though, and when Sally had searched the whole damn room for her she gave up and decided to just wait for the files to return to normal. She read the rest of them in the meantime, and discovered they got more and more obscene as they went on. They were unusable.

 

And they never did go back to normal. How Adler could maintain the energy and concentration required to keep a story going, how she could keep one going at a distance, Sally didn’t know. She wondered whether the files could somehow have been physically switched but could see no way that was possible. Eventually she was forced to restart her notes and the time she lost meant that the window of opportunity to solve the case slipped by. Of course now she was pretty sure who had planned the con anyway, but that wasn’t much use without evidence.

 

Sally had, however, solved her next Adler-related case, forcing Adler to flee her home in the night and disappear. The thrill of triumph she’d felt at that had worried her: she was, despite herself, getting invested. Even flattered by the wholly disruptive attention Adler was showing her. After that she passed the search for Adler onto someone else and tried not to think about her.

 

And now here she is. Bold as brass and clear as day, smiling up at Sally for all the world as though they were friends. Sally decides fast, has little choice: smiling or not Adler is suspected of multiple crimes, on the run and not to be underestimated, and Sally had better go on the offensive while she has the chance. Instead of gently pulling forward the strands of story she can find, she yanks them hard, hoping for the element of surprise.

 

_Sal Donovyan hadn’t slept since she ended the four and a half hour war._

She felt herself change. She was wearing a large brown jacket, leather gloves, and a thick apron which seemed to consist of gears made of cloth. They turned with no more sound than a quiet rustling. Her hair was pulled back away from her face, and there were heavy boots on her feet and a satchel made of what looked like spiderweb slung over her shoulder, though when she brushed her hand against it it didn’t feel sticky.

 

_Not true. She had slept once. The dreams had made her decide it wasn’t a great idea, so now she injected herself with polymancite when she felt herself nodding. She’d been going strong for two weeks like that._

She was in a junkyard full of strange looking devices. An enormous eye, gears in its eyelashes, blinked whirringly from a pile of scrap metal. Closer to her there was a small tower, about her size, filled with green liquid that whirled constantly around a ball of what looked like damp fur suspended halfway up. Adler was nowhere to be seen, but –

 

_She had nightmares about dead Sirians, of course, that was to be expected. And she was fretting, too, because the robots she’d made were proving something of a problem._

_(They’d told her this would happen. In the frantic twenty minute conversation that had taken place fourteen minutes after the war began, they’d pointed out all the flaws in her plan. And she’d said, ‘So tell me the alternatives,’ and they’d gone quiet._

_She still thinks she made the right call, despite everything. The Sirians could detect human weakness, could sense their movements, were predatory beyond anything humans had encountered before in their tentative early explorations of the galaxy. Robots whose electronic cognition could shift rapidly to mimic the thought processes of their target were humanity’s only way of fighting back. Donovyan had invented them in forty minutes and built them in two hours. She had expected a long, bloody year of trial and error until she built something with fast enough mirroring to outmanoeuvre the Sirians. But things hadn’t turned out that way. The war had become famous for its short duration, and Donovyan had got famous too, even more than she had been before.)_

Irene was bound to try and run for it, get outside the half mile distant borders of Sally’s story so that she could create her own. It was impossible to create a story in an area where someone had already done so, and in their previous encounters Irene had got in first, but not this time. Sally just had to make sure that Irene didn’t get away.

_It wasn't that the robots Donovyan had made to end the war were hostile, exactly, or violent. There had been fears about the robot uprising for longer than there had been sentient robots, but in the event year after year had gone by after without a flicker. Once fictional laws of robotics had been coaxed into reality by the brilliance of the early roboticists and their engineering teams. (Donovyan's first job, at the age of fifteen, had been taking care of current flow on such a team. The rest, as they say, was history. Before she tinkered with the security controls , enterprising journalists sometimes used to appear in her teleport pod wanting to know,_ _How do you make it from lowly current flow engineer to world-famous roboticist and inventor in ten years? By not paying attention, she'd said to one, before she knew why she shouldn't.)_

_No. Robots were never hostile. But these particular robots, the mimics, were...unusual. Unusual meant trouble. And for once it was trouble that she couldn't fix with a bright idea and a neutrowrench._

Did she have a gun? A weapon, of any kind? No, she was an inventor. If she hadn't had to work fast she'd have pushed the story around till it made her a soldier, but there hadn't been time and it was solidly real now. One pocket of her jacket turned out to contain a stick of metal with a clear plastic orb on the end full of fizzing lights, which looked possibly quite dangerous, but she didn't know what it was for and wasn't about to try and bluff Irene Adler. The other pocket had a wrench in it. She gripped it, and peered round the tower. Nothing.

_The robots had learned to mimic the Sirians, and their development had stopped there. Donovyan had only had a few hours to invent them, after all, and she'd focused on making ones that could get the job done. They no longer shifted. Instead, they continued to think like the Sirians. Useful, if the stragglers ever came back. But trouble. They worked for the government now and lived in a government warehouse, as most robots did. And Donovyan got more complaints every day, about robots doing stuff that wasn't dangerous or bad but was simply unsettling._

_And then one of them had escaped._

She tried a pile of scrap metal, then another. No Adler. It didn't help that until the story revealed it, Sally didn't even know what she looked like.

_Actually, escaped was the wrong word, because the robots weren't prisoners. In theory, they were allowed to walk out whenever they wanted. But none of them had ever wanted to. None of them had ever shown any inclination to do anything except perform their jobs and then cross the subway to the warehouse, plug themselves into the datapoint, and reduce their power to 0.5 till morning. But three days ago 1R3N, nicknamed Iren, had strolled casually to the door, apparently smiled, said to a nearby robot (the only witness), 'Haven’t you ever just – oh, never mind,' and left. By the time the robot mentioned this incident to one of the human supervisors, Iren was long gone._

So Irene was a robot. But that told Sally almost nothing about what she actually looked like. She could be humanoid in shape but made of metal, or fully android, or something else entirely. Sally stood with her back to the tower and listened hard.

_Donovyan hadn't had much time to work on the aesthetics of the robots. Normally she favoured a slightly rough-edged look anyway - she had never tried to make androids, and felt that many android designers didn't really understand robots, but nor did she like the edgeless gleaming metal that most other roboticists tended to go in for. She liked robots to look like themselves, different from other machines and different from humans. Bulletproof glass appeared a lot, with unsanded edges and a complex network of wires, water pipes and valves visible behind it. Somewhat reluctantly she did make them roughly human-shaped and sculpt glass faces for them because she found that people wouldn't interact with them properly otherwise, but would treat them like unthinking machines._

_She had made the anti-Sirian robots roughly Sirian-shaped instead, which meant that they had a tail instead of legs, which split into six thinner tails halfway along, with an upward flick at the end of each one. The tails had originally been coiled together as the Sirians' often were, but the robots had worked on themselves, improving their design, introducing metal joints to their glass frames, and now they could coil and uncoil and twirl their tails like real Sirians. Their human supervisors found that disturbing, too._

Even as the words entered Sally's head, she felt a cool point against her skin, then another, and turned too late to see things like thick pointed glass ropes coming around the tower and looping themselves around her arms.

 

She calculated fast. If she twisted her arm just _that_ way and then moved to the left and brought the wrench down by flicking her wrist –

 

‘I’m not trying to hurt you, you know,’ Irene said, stepping out from behind the tower. Well, stepping wasn’t the word, she slithered on the tails she wasn’t using to hold Sally. And then she let Sally go.

 

Having been planning how to get out of the grip, Sally was left unbalanced by this. She held the wrench up slightly and said, ‘What do you want, then?’

 

‘I know what I like,’ Irene said simply. ‘It’s a gift. Most people don’t have it.’ It was disturbing, watching her glass lips move, watching the water behind them flow as they did and settle, valves spinning, when she stopped talking.

 

‘And you like messing with me.’ What now? She concentrated hard, pulling new plot points towards her. _Another thing that worried Donovyan was that the mimics all shared a flaw. By pressing down at the back of their glass necks, all the water through which currents were moved around in complex patterns to enable thought could be stilled, and the robot in question would lapse into what was effectively unconsciousness. If that happened and they weren’t found in time for their regular data renewal, their power could leech out and they could become irreparable._

That was the thought she started. It was neat, plausible, sustainable, and would allow her to disable Irene fairly easily without causing permanent harm. The story would end long before the ‘data renewal’ issue became a problem. But as she began to shape it she lurched, suddenly intensely queasy. Something was happening, something that felt so wrong she wanted to curl in on herself. Like the glass tails winding their way around her arms, she could feel tendrils of something alien, something not hers, making their way into the story as she built it.

 

_Another thing that worried Donovyan was that the mimics all shared a flaw. By pressing down on the back of their glass necks, all the water through which currents were moved around in complex patterns to enable thought could be drawn towards that one place, causing the robot in question to become obsessively focused on whatever thought had been in their mind at that moment. And even after the water had begun flowing normally, the robot would never be the same again. Donovyan had been warned that Iren had, experimentally, pressed their own neck in this way some weeks ago, and had been fixated since then on the woman who had created them._

_When Donovyan came face to face with Iren, she understood that Iren had left their post because they had been looking for her._

‘How are you doing that?’ Sally asked. ‘That shouldn’t be possible.’

 

‘There’s always gaps,’ Irene said, with a shrug. ‘It’s just a question of finding your way in. Which I’m good at.’

 

‘So why not give yourself weapons?’ Sally asked, despite herself. She should be staying focused, but it was hard not to get lured into back and forth, into trying to make sense of what Irene was up to.

 

‘I told you, I don’t have any interest in hurting you. Besides, my toolkit’s limited, isn’t it? Not a lot of heavy weaponry in most erotica, although admittedly there are exceptions.’

 

They shouldn’t be able to have this conversation either, it didn’t fit the plot. Irene’s powers were clearly far more flexible and dramatic than Sally’s or Jo’s. Sally was beginning to suspect she might be in over her head.

 

_The world was strange to Iren, full of pressure and space. They were constantly, oppressively aware of the weaknesses of the creatures around them, of how they could hurt them, but their programming forbade them from causing harm to human beings and strongly discouraged them from harming anything else except to protect a human. Of course they dwelt on their creator, how could they not? In order to have made Iren she must have understood at least some of this, must have entered these thought processes._

_So when Iren encountered her in a junkyard at night, they didn’t hesitate. They introduced themselves with touch, as robots did, and then drew back when that seemed unwelcome. And then they kissed her._

Sally felt frozen to the spot. Irene was moving nearer, driven by her own story, or the story she’d inserted into Sally’s story. ‘Let me move,’ Sally said. ‘This isn’t –‘

 

Irene paused. ‘The story’s not holding you in place,’ she said. ‘Iren’s committed, it’s said what they’re doing, but Donovyan can do what she likes.’

 

Sally listened, tried to recode.

_Donovyan remained frozen to the spot –_

_Donovyan lashed out, but Iren caught her hand and she didn’t try to get out, she stood and felt the cool glass against her skin and thought_ Maybe just once –

_Donovyan ran, shocked. She stumbled, fell, and felt glass around her hands, so gentle, pulling her up, and knew that she wanted –_

She swallowed. This wasn’t Irene, these stories felt very much her own. And they were right: she knew what she wanted, could feel it pound in her. That didn’t particularly matter; she had wanted stupid things before and known better than to reach for them. And this was intensely stupid. But today had been a good day and the days before that had – had not – and God, she was tired, and this – it was only a story –

 

_Iren pressed their glass mouth to Donovyan’s face, clumsy, puzzled. Donovyan drew back gently and laid a hand on Iren’s arm. ‘I knew you’d be here,’ she said._

_‘I needed to find you,’ Iren said. ‘I needed you, and you weren’t…’_

_‘I know,’ Donovyan told them. ‘I know, and I’m sorry.’ She pressed a warm hand to Iren’s clear skull, stroked the place where hair would have been. And then she shut her eyes, and pressed their mouths together again. It was strange, wrong, and it was cold. But when Iren’s lips moved against Donovyan’s she heard water close by, like a shell against her ear, and she knew she’d needed this too._

Hours later, the story long ended, Sally walks home.

 

They didn’t stop touching after the story fizzled out, she didn’t feel able to. There was – Irene gripping Sally’s wrists and saying _God you’d suit handcuffs_ and Sally twisted away from her and pinned her to the wall, said _I’ve seen the kind of handcuffs you use, I’d be out in ten seconds, you try some real ones sometime_ , and Irene had said _Oh yes please._ There was more kissing, and Sally thinking _this is great, getting her guard down, and then I’ll handcuff her and not in the way she wants,_ not kidding herself for one moment. Her hand inside Irene, then smearing the front of Irene’s pristine white dress, unable to help herself, going back for more, fingers damp with greed. They taunted each other ( _Is this what you came for, Sgt. Donovan? Is this why you’ve been looking for me?_ And she’d replied, _Is this why you’ve been trying to make me look?_ Then Irene: _Yes, of course it is. Or it’s part of why._ ) They fought, Sally at one point overcome with what she was doing, the absurdity, twisting Irene’s hands behind her and pulling out the handcuffs. But then Irene submitted to the handcuffs without resistance and Sally thought _what the fuck, I can’t handcuff her, she’s only a suspect, she’s not even charged with anything yet,_ and she could have panicked then, overcome with _what the hell am I doing_ , except then she looked at the tiny smear of lipstick trailing from Irene’s mouth and dug one nail into it and Irene tipped her head back and leaned against her own bound hands pressing against the wall and spread her legs and panic became something else.

 

It isn’t light yet, and the night air’s cool on her face. Right now, she feels more or less OK about what she’s done, although tomorrow might be different. This isn’t like her, in a multitude of ways. But then what she’s like has been in flux lately.

 

The thing is – well, the thing is too many things. She’s exhausted, really, is what it comes down to. She spent two years on one problem, returning to it again and again between her real work. She’d needed, desperately, to understand what had happened. She never let herself regret reporting Sherlock, even on too-hot nights at two a.m. when she stared at the cracks in the plaster and thought _would she have jumped if I hadn’t_ , even then she’d reached down to a logical core and asked _what were the alternatives?_ and known that all the alternatives had been unacceptable. So it hadn’t been regret that motivated her, but a sense that everything she’d understood for five years was in chaos. She’d justified not reporting Sherlock’s dubiously legal interference before because she knew that Sherlock did help, and that Lestrade believed in her. And now she wasn’t going to be able to get a decent night’s sleep until she got some answers.

 

Which of course, in the end she did. Too many, according to Sherlock, who thought that answers were her territory. She’s never showed any gratitude for Sally saving her life, finally figuring out the last pieces of the puzzle and tracking her down, taking holiday time to go undercover in Serbia and break her out. But she treats Sally differently now, in a way that’s hard to pin down. Then again, Sally thinks she’s probably treating everyone slightly differently.

 

It’s a relief to be free of those two a.m. question and answer sessions, of having to repeatedly remind herself why she had to do what she did. And a relief to be able to focus on her work again. But she spent two years half-immersed in Sherlock’s world, a normal police officer by day and a ghost tracing the pattern of Sherlock’s unreal life by night, and now she’s got a new double life, infinitely preferable for being her own but nevertheless sometimes disquieting. She already knew she’d been changed by it all. Now she knows more about how, and how much, and what the change might mean in practice.

 

There’s lipstick by her mouth, and on her neck and on her shoulders. She’s got to get up at six for work tomorrow. Her body is slightly bruised, singing, disoriented. She’ll need to sleep before she knows how she feels about anything that’s happened tonight.

 

She pauses outside the door to her block of flats, suddenly aware that something’s wrong. She looks round, but can’t place it. Then she looks to her left, and saw it.

 

There were four apples growing from the tree by the driveway, blood red and marked with golden letters: _O N C E_

Oh, yes, of course; she remembered now. She had been to a local market the other day, and had traded her pet cat for a golden seed, which she had planted. It had grown quite slowly for a magic plant, and she had been annoyed, but she was hungry now and there were the fruits of her labour, waiting for her. Her teeth felt very white and sharp in her mouth. They needed to pierce something.

 

She ate all the apples. Something haunted the edges of her mind as she did, some warning, thoughts perhaps about greed, which she knew to be dangerous. The hunger would not be ignored, however. As she finished the last one, she caught a gleam out of the corner of her eye and looked down to see letters shining on her left hand: _UPON_

Her right was labelled too: _A TIME_

Then the letters faded, and her shadow vanished amongst the other shadows, and she stumbles, touches her hand, in confusion, to her temples, and then looks around her.

 

She’s tired, and has work tomorrow, and very much wants to sleep. But she thinks something happened just now that she doesn’t understand, and she knows she can’t rest until she at least makes a start on figuring it out.


	7. Chapter 7

**i.**

 

‘See, Mary, the thing is, I’m actually not stupid?’

 

No good. Even here, on her own in her flat, it sounds both hesitant and angry. Well, she _is_ hesitant and kind of angry, so that’s not actually enormously surprising, but Mary’s so bloody poised Janine feels she’s got to do better. Hard, though, when Mary leaves her feeling so jittery and weird.

 

No, _I’m not actually stupid_ is probably not the angle to go with. Hard not to sound defensive. And anyway she feels pretty damn stupid because she’d never have even thought this way if it weren’t for Sherlock. Who was a great deal more obvious.

 

Mary will be here in ten minutes. Janine bites her lip and rearranges her hair. She was such a mess last time Mary saw her, she’d like to do better there too, this time. Which is kind of screwed up, really, considering what she suspects.

 

She picks up a paper and settles on the sofa, tries to calm herself, but they’re still running the _Lesbian orgies in Baker Street_ ( _“She made me wear the hat”_ ) story and while looking at it previously made Janine feel extremely pleased with herself and content with life, now it just makes her feel tired. She’s out of revenge schemes, and she doesn’t really want to need another one. If what she suspects is true, it’ll hurt much more than Sherlock did.

 

It helps, of course, that she realised what Sherlock was up to almost immediately, that for the duration of their ‘relationship’ they were using each other. With Mary…well, Janine supposes she could do exactly the same thing. But she’d hoped…she’d wanted…

 

She considers, again, quitting her job altogether and therefore dispensing with the problem of people using her to get close to her boss. She’d also be done with the afternoons trying to keep her eyes open, trying not to curl her hands into fists as he flicks his finger forward, with typing at her computer and then turning round to find him just standing there and watching her and smirking, with sitting perfectly still as he passes her desk and casually spits onto it, just to see what she’ll do. But though her own past is an open book, she can’t be sure that’s true for everyone she cares about. He told her he’d make her pay if she left, and she believes him.

 

She’d had high hopes for Sherlock. But that was weeks ago, and nothing’s changed.

 

They’d met at a dinner party thrown by Mary – also where Janine had met Molly – and Janine had flirted with Sherlock early in the evening. As the night progressed, and Jo coaxed Sherlock into drinking with the rest of them, Sherlock’s guard lowered by a few degrees and it became obvious that Janine was wasting her time. There was only one person in the room – by eleven Janine was reckoning possibly in the world – who had a chance with Sherlock Holmes.

 

Janine had mentioned her job, too, complained about it in a carefully censored way. She hadn’t noticed Sherlock paying particular attention, but clearly she had been, because a week later she’d rung up and asked Janine out for dinner. Janine had been, well, all the usual things. Flattered, excited. And, despite herself, a little…she hadn’t been looking for a relationship at all, but there was something desperately compelling about Sherlock, and maybe…

 

Once on the date, though, it became clear that something was off, and Sherlock’s occasional questions about Janine’s boss eventually allowed her to figure out what was going on. She could have ended it then but she felt strangely hurt by it all. That first night, at that dinner party, she’d thought Sherlock was lonely, and could do with more friends, had felt, as the alcohol in her system increased, strangely tender towards her. _We could have been friends_ , she wanted to shout at Sherlock on their second date. _I’m a fucking great friend._ She felt irritable, too, that Sherlock had never bothered to consider how Janine was likely to feel about Magnussen, that she might have her own reasons for wanting to help.

 

So Janine decided that if Sherlock was going to use her Janine would just have to return the favour. She’d help Sherlock with her plan to take down Magnussen, and then…she’d see. She liked the idea of doing something to get revenge and get Sherlock’s attention, show Sherlock she’d completely misjudged who Janine was.

 

All that went according to plan. But whatever Sherlock’s plan was to get rid of Magnussen, it hasn’t worked. Janine had let her into the office after her absurd proposal; she’d come striding up, ring nowhere in sight, said ‘I’m afraid – look, I’ll explain later,’ and gone into the inner room. Magnussen hadn’t been there that night, and Sherlock had probably, Janine now thought, been looking for the code to the Appledore vaults, or a clue to it. But Magnussen didn’t keep anything like that written down, of course; the only way to learn it would be to spy on him as he opened them. Sherlock should have asked her. But Sherlock, quite obviously, would never have considered that Janine would bother her head about a thing like that.

 

In conclusion, Sherlock Holmes is an idiot, Magnussen’s still as active as ever, and Mary…oh, perhaps she really is just Janine’s friend. Perhaps this is all crazy. Janine rubs her eyes and tosses the newspaper down. Five minutes. Mary will be on time, practically to the second. Janine is a lot more chaotic, and forever apologising.

 

Her phone buzzes right on cue, and she goes down to meet Mary. They’ll go to dinner near her flat and then come back here. Mary will have booked a table at the restaurant – she always does – and she’ll have asked for a corner table: they’ve had one every time, which can’t be a coincidence. So they sit at right angles to each other instead of opposite, and sometimes Mary leans in too close, and sometimes her foot grazes Janine’s. At those times, everything she says makes Janine want to kiss her.

 

Admittedly Janine wants to kiss a lot of people; wanting to kiss someone is really not a very unusual state for her. But this is a sharp want, and one she’s had no luck dispelling.

 

Walking to the restaurant, Janine is hyper-aware of the warmth of Mary’s body a hand’s breadth from her. They make conversation, and Mary makes her laugh like she always can, and maybe Janine’s worrying about nothing. After all, Mary was the third and youngest daughter of a woodcutter: highly unlikely to be evil. Or at least so she claimed – she was also an orphan (another point in her favour) so it wasn’t as though Janine had met her family, but who’d tell a lie of that magnitude?

 

The sun was setting over the castle in the distance by the time they got to the restaurant. Unwise to cross a threshold at the point of sunset, but it looked like they’d make it through the door just in time. They stepped through, Janine’s glass slippers chiming against the flagstone floor, and the waitress shows them to their table.

 

She waits until they’ve had a glass of wine each before making her first move. ‘Hell at work today,’ she says, and watches Mary carefully. No doubt about it: she’s suddenly focused, the wine blur vanishing in an instant from her eyes.

 

‘You poor thing,’ Mary says. ‘What was it?’

 

‘Newspaper tycoons are kind of a dickheads, is all,’ Janine says. ‘How was your day?’

 

‘Oh, same old,’ Mary says. ‘Coughs and sneezes and all that. Dickheads how? I mean, unless you don’t want to talk about it.’

 

‘No, it’s…I mean it’s all pretty standard,’ Janine says. ‘He’s just, you know, bit unreasonable. Shouts a lot. How’s Jo? Recovering?’

 

‘Yeah, much better,’ Mary says, shooting her a look: they’re not supposed to discuss anything relating to Jo’s secret identity in public. ‘Sherlock’s looking after her well. Is it true that…’ She giggles. ‘I don’t even know how to ask this. I didn’t have time to ask you about it when I saw you the other night, but I saw the paper, and…that stuff, is it _true_?’

 

Janine snorts. ‘ Not exactly _true_. She faked dating me for a case. ’

 

‘God!’ Mary looks genuinely horrified. Or is that alarm, concern that Janine might now be wise to similar attempts? ‘Were you in on it, or –‘

 

‘Didn’t know a thing,’ Janine says, enjoying herself now. ‘Not till she proposed to me at work after we’d only been dating three weeks. _Then_ I knew something was up. ’

 

‘At work,’ Mary repeats. ‘You let her in?’ Her face has settled again, and Janine knows now without a doubt. She also knows herself to be too much of a coward to bring it up.

 

So she just says, ‘No, of course not, Magnussen’d kill me, she got out a ring on the fucking intercom and I said no and she left,’ and then changes the subject with sufficient force that Mary has no way of bringing it back again without being clunkingly obvious.

 

After dinner they go back to Janine’s, as expected, and as Janine also now expects, Mary kisses her. She’s wanted this too much not to let it happen for a bit, but after a while she draws back, and sighs, and says, ‘I need to take this slow. Bit messed up after Sherlock.’

 

‘Of course,’ Mary says gravely, probably delighted that she won’t have to have sex as part of this plan. Janine had kissed Sherlock too, and had once tried, cautiously, to take things further, thinking that if she was going to have the world’s most dysfunctional relationship she might as well get some sex out of it. She’d been mindful that Sherlock might feel she had to for the sake of the deception, and had watched carefully to try and gauge whether she wanted it. In the end, though, careful observation was not required: it was painfully obvious that the touching made Sherlock unhappy. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested – she appeared, in fact, to get turned on shockingly easily, which would have been hot if Janine weren’t half convinced Sherlock was somehow faking all of it. And if Sherlock’s mask hadn’t slipped, more than once, as Janine touched her, sadness twisting briefly across her face. Janine stopped, with only the most half-hearted of protests from Sherlock, and didn’t try again – although when Jo was over she couldn’t resist seeing what would happen if she made it look as though she had, and was privately delighted with the results. Nevertheless, the fact remains that she hasn’t had sex in months. She really needs to get out there and meet people. Preferably people who want to have sex with her as opposed to people who want to kiss her until she lets them into her boss’s office.

 

After that the evening pretty much goes like their evenings normally do. They watch a film and chat and drink more wine, and Janine tries not to hurt, and searches in her head for the source of the feeling that something happened tonight that shouldn’t have happened. Aside from the obvious. But she supposes that all these little betrayals have just left her feeling a bit violated, like things are going on in her head that don’t belong to her. Unsurprising, really.

 

She should tell Mary she knows what’s going on, bring it all out in the open, but whereas Sherlock’s interest in Magnussen was obvious, Mary’s is puzzling. She isn’t a detective, so it must be personal, he must have something on her. Janine decides she’d better have a go at finding out what that is before she approaches the daunting task of having it out with Mary.

 

**ii.**

 

At this time of day the house is half-full of dappled light, bright in-and-out streaming and the colour of cream, and Irene likes to lie back on her sofa in shadow with a foot in the patch of retreating sun and watch the light depart, watch blotted out blemishes and veins gradually reassert themselves as they’re freed from the glow that smoothes over everything.

 

Sherlock is coming, Irene will have to get up soon, the light will fade altogether, but this is the stillest moment of the day and it’s important not to miss it, especially now, today, she has a lot to think about and needs stillness to do it but it’s no good: her thoughts are already speeding up again, breaking away from the slowly trickling light that eases away from her murmurlessly, they’re spinning themselves towards the evening ahead, her plans, and the night behind and what she did. No point staying here. She gets up.

 

Her sofa twilight thoughts trail her round the room as it darkens and she dresses and her skin remembers being made of glass. She holds what happened in her head like it’s the last of the light sitting over her toes, looks at it one way then another. Unlike Sherlock, Irene can be in love with someone without breaking them down into their component parts, without fixating on their eye colour or the patch of skin in the middle of the back of their neck; she knows Sherlock does it, has watched her doing it, and of course she does it because she can’t handle the feeling of taking in all those things at once. Irene is tougher, at least when it comes to this, she’ll look and listen and converse all at a time, and anyway it’s too early to say she’s in love yet isn’t it, although she can predict when it’s going to happen, and she hasn’t been wrong yet, although admittedly neither prediction nor proof have happened often. But she can contemplate the approaching emotion without being too perturbed: another thing Sherlock doesn’t understand is that it’s not a weakness, or at least it doesn’t have to be a weakness if carefully corralled. Last night she took control and gave up control, danced with it as she does, and Sally Donovan kissed her back.

 

Irene will need to make plans for another meeting, she won’t go without. For now she gathers the memory around her and wonders what game to play next, what Sally might seethe at or enjoy. Perhaps entering one of her stories again; that had shocked her. May be that the others haven’t realised yet how much this really does all come straight from them, that Jo and Sally are wholly themselves and constant creators of their own stories, that their minds and bodies have borders with locations they know without thinking, their stories are solid and warmly large and could never be squeezed into someone else’s, but Irene is a manipulator and soft-boundaried and always on the move, Irene is a liar and a perpetual editor of her own and everyone’s stories. They haven’t met, but from distant spectatorship Irene suspects that Mary Morstan could do what Irene can do if she wanted; that she clearly doesn’t want is interesting but something perhaps to look into later, because the doorbell’s demanding her presence and her wits in the room and trained on the here and now. She goes downstairs.

 

She sits in the living room with Sherlock, who evades the point again and again, starts a pointless intellectual sparring match (which Sherlock wins as she always does, without guessing that they were never playing the same game) and then finally says, ‘The Fablers can sense each other.’

 

‘Yes,’ Irene says, ‘although we can also put up shields. Nightmare Girl’s managed to hide herself from all of us.’

 

‘So you knew,’ Sherlock says, and Irene tilts her face to the final drops of light dripping through the air towards the window and balances them on her eyelashes and says, ‘I did.’

 

Then it becomes amusing, because Sherlock is reluctant to say _I’m hurt that Jo lied to me_ and begins skirting the issue again. They exhaust Irene, those two, forever causing each other and themselves unnecessary pain, Sherlock’s failure to understand that it’s precisely her conviction that what she feels is a weakness that makes it one, Jo’s pointless stoicism, sooner or later Irene’s going to have to do something about it simply for her own peace of –

 

_Get out get out get out get out_

She’s reeling, pushing hard, the map of her mind pulsing and twisting, _get out of my –_

‘Sherlock,’ Irene said, readjusting her tiara, ‘She’s your true love. You know how this works, even if you have scorned the whole area your entire life. There will be obstacles and trials and tests of devotion. It’s up to you to overcome them.’

 

‘Yes, thank you, _your majesty_ ,’ Sherlock said.

 

‘Irene, please,’ Irene said. ‘And there’s no need to take that tone. I’m trying to help.’

 

‘Yes, well,’ Sherlock said. ‘Presumably as the Queen of the Kingdom, and a fairy, any obstacles you encounter get nicely smoothed out of the way for you. I don’t have that luxury.’

 

Irene raised her eyebrows. ‘Lady Mycroft’s rather known for smoothing,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll find you have a great deal more smoothed for you than most people. However, this isn’t an area where anyone else can really help you. You’re just going to have to talk to Joanna.’

 

‘Is that a royal command?’ Sherlock said, standing.

 

‘It’s advice from a friend,’ Irene said. ‘One who means you well, whatever you might think.’

 

Sherlock tossed her long hair; it gleamed darkly against her red doublet. ‘I can’t tell whether you expect me to believe that,’ she says, running a hand through her short artful curls. Irene reels, tries not to show it. Sherlock looks suddenly disconcerted; evidently she felt something too, but just as evidently, neither of them is going to be the first to bring it up, to show weakness by admitting to having had something happen in their heads that they don’t understand.

 

Irene does know, however, that whatever just happened was deeply, frighteningly wrong, a wrong she can still feel in every bone of her body. She stands. She’s going to sort Sherlock’s lovely demented head out while she still has the chance. ‘You’re going to talk to Jo,’ she says. ‘And I’m going to come with you to make sure you do.’

 

**iii.**

 

**_NIGHTMARE GIRL STRIKES AGAIN_ **

****

_At 1.00 a.m. last night two academically successful students at University College London were terrified by a horrifying display that is believed to have been the work of Fabler Nightmare Girl._

_The two young men, aged 19 and 21, were at a raging alcohol and drug fuelled party, organised by a fellow UCL student through Facebook, when they went upstairs with a girl described by witnesses as young with dark hair and wearing a short, low-cut red dress. So far she has not come forward with more information about her experience._

**| _I don’t know if I can talk about it. It was so horrible._ |**

_Witnesses said that the girl was staggering and that the two men were supporting her._

_The two young students have admitted to the police that the girl passed out immediately and that their intention was to ‘have some fun and take advantage of the situation’. However, they did not get their chance._

_The older of the two, currently on bail and awaiting trial, said, ‘I don’t know if I can talk about it,’ adding, ‘It was so horrible.’_

_‘The door shut by itself. We thought that was weird, and then we tried to open it and it wouldn’t open,’ he said. ‘Then all the lights went out and these red eyes began to appear in the corners of the room, just watching us. And then this creepy voice out of nowhere started just like, saying our names over and over and we just freaked out and climbed out of the window.’_

_Once outside, however, the two men discovered that their troubles were not over. ‘We’d run one way and hundreds of worms would crawl out of the ground and they’d open up these mouths full of teeth, so then we’d change direction and we got to this park and leaves were falling and when they touched us they stuck to us and stung and stung and – it was just – so we ran out of the park and at this point we were just crazy and we found we were outside a police station and we just were so desperate we ran in and told them everything.’_

_Both students say they have learned from their ordeal and are deeply sorry for the actions they contemplated but did not carry out. ‘I do think it was a bit much though,’ one said. ‘We hadn’t even done anything and it’s not like she’s the police or something, and you’re not supposed to torture people. If you think about it it’s a human rights thing, and there aren’t really any laws about what the Fablers can do because it’s crazy superhero stuff that no one thought was real so I just think there should be more control over what they’re doing. But I’m not saying what we were doing was OK, but I’m just saying – it was like torture. It’s hard to explain what it was like, what Nightmare Girl did to us. And we hadn’t even done anything so the punishment just didn’t really fit the crime is all I mean. But we are really sorry.’_

Martha Hudson smiles, sets the paper aside, and sips her tea. The facts aren’t really too distorted by _Daily Mail_ standards, and she’s even got used to the ridiculous nickname, though she wonders what the person who thought it up would say were they to come face to face with her. Do people who read the words _Nightmare Girl_ imagine a child? No, more likely a teenager or a young woman. But almost certainly not her.

 

She smiles further at that thought, and decides to have a second cup of tea. She did have a late night, after all. And soon she’ll have to go out and do the shopping and drop in upstairs with sandwiches for the girls – she didn’t hear them come in last night, and if they’ve been out on one of their adventures there’s not a chance they’ll have remembered to get anything to feed themselves. It’s not good for them to have all those takeaways all the time.

 

She wonders, often, what they would say if they found out what she’s been up to lately. Actually, Sherlock probably wouldn’t be particularly fazed, but Joanna…Martha has often thought of telling her, but has held back. After all, she’s fairly sure that Joanna hasn’t told Sherlock about the Bakerloo Witch, although that must be for very different reasons.

 

Martha has kept her identity to herself because she can’t always avoid violence and that troubles her somewhat, and because some things should be private, and because Joanna and Sherlock are charmingly protective of her and would probably want her to stop. And that she won’t do. Once she danced and typed while people got hurt, and she went on doing that until she couldn’t. It isn’t a habit she thinks she could pick up again.

 

Though it’s more complicated than that, of course. She’d always known that in a way, but there was nothing like experience as a teacher.

 

When she was thirty three and newly married the world had seemed simpler than it had in years. She hadn’t grown up especially wanting to get married; stability for her had been about owning her own home and having money to travel, not about a husband (though it had been a job trying to explain that to her mother), and she had made her way about quite happily never thinking of the subject until Frank had swept into her life, clever and ambitious and full of schemes and utterly irresistible. The thought of a marriage that wasn’t in the least about stability, that her mother would be a bit shocked by, was strangely appealing, for all that she knew it wouldn’t work in the long run. But then and there the idea of forgetting all about the long run was awfully seductive. And then she had what most of her friends had had in their twenties: travel and sunshine and running in the rain and being in love, and blissful thoughtlessness.

 

And then for years it got more and more complicated until one day she knew she couldn’t let it go on and she gathered up all her courage and she made things briefly, brutally simple, walking into a police station and saying _My husband blew a man’s head off, and I think he’s about to kill someone else; I might already be too late._ Nothing’s ever been as simple since.

 

Particularly the months and years after she first ratted them out, which were not only complicated but exhausting. She’d done the typing. Those records that there were – and of course he’d kept as few as he could – she had most of. And the process of showing the courts what she’d seen and convincing them it was true took years. She hadn’t wanted anyone else to die, but as the process dragged on and the appeals bounced back and forth and she stood and watched him through the thick glass and his voice shattered against her ear through the phone she knew that he could stay in prison for the rest of his life, which would break him, or he’d get out and break her. And so twenty years after she first turned them all in, when she was living in London far away from it all but not remotely free, she took the mound of paper she’d been keeping all this time to Maggie – to Margaret, who Martha has no right to call Maggie now – and said _you’re a top lawyer now, I know we lost touch, I know I’ve been no sort of friend to you, but that’s because you had the sense to get out when you saw how things were going and I…was in love. With Frank and with Florida and with getting one over on people. It’s not an excuse. I should have gone with you when you left, when you left is when it all went to bits and I should have realised it wouldn’t be any good without you. But I need your help. I’m so afraid, Mags – Margaret. You don’t know what he’s capable of – I mean I know you do in a way, I know he – I know it was bad, but you left before – you didn’t see the worst of it. I need you to help me._ They were standing in Margaret’s doorway, Margaret reluctant to let her in, but she said _How can I help you?_ and didn’t shrink from looking Martha in the eye. And Martha said, _I’ve got all this paper and I only understand two thirds of it. I need to prove the things he did. I’ve got lawyers but they’re not on your level. You could always find things out. I need you to help me get my husband killed._

Margaret said she’d help in exchange for Martha leaving her alone for good once they were done. She took the papers and came back to her with the news that the information there wasn’t enough. _There must have been other papers. Financial stuff, you know that’s crucial for proving the motive for the first murder, and…some of the most important things are missing. The police should have looked into all this, but…_

_Yeah_ , Martha said. _They never tried that hard. Frank’s…got friends, I think. More than you’d expect. And now so much time’s passed._

_Yes, it has._

That was a rebuke, but she pressed on. _The police don’t waste their time on cases that old. I suppose I could get a private detective to look into it._

_Not a bad idea. So many of them are useless, though._ Then she’d hesitated, and Martha had had to press her hard before she said, reluctantly, _There’s this kid. Well, eighteen. She’s just a student, but she showed up at our Chambers once, said she had vital information for one of our cases, and…yeah, she was right, it changed everything. And the way she’d figured it out – look, I don’t know how to explain her. She’s extraordinary. But she’s not reliable, I think…probably drugs, though I don’t know for sure, and I suppose you probably have strong feelings about that now –_

_Not really. Or not the ones you’d think. And I might need extraordinary. What’s her name?_

Martha sighs, thinking of Sherlock then, and as always when she does that feels immensely grateful for the existence of Geraldine Lestrade and Joanna Watson. As it turned out, Sherlock was unreliable in a way that Martha didn’t think actually had much to do with drugs, and certainly extraordinary, but barely able to cope with the weight of her own extraordinariness. When it was all over, and Martha had forced herself to stay and wait outside while they administered the injection, it seemed only natural to stay in touch, despite Sherlock grumbling about it, and look in on her every now and then.

 

She shakes her head. She’s let herself get distracted by her thoughts, and there’s things she ought to be doing. She clears up her mug, has a biscuit, and heads out to the shops.

 

The stories of the city are noisier outside, harder to ignore. She feels her limbs itch to melt away into shadow. But when she listens there’s nothing that urgently demands her attention, and so she pushes the stories away and continues to the corner shop.

 

She buys the essentials, and wonders whether she has the energy to patrol again tonight. Not really. She knows it’s unwise to push herself excessively, but it’s hard to stay in bed knowing that she could help. Or she hopes it helps. Again, nothing is simple. She feels too old to wish it were, knows how much would be lost if that were the case, but…

 

Well, for example, there’s the boys she stopped last night, who have now made a fortune from interviews with the papers, and since she stopped them before they did what they’d intended to do and it can’t be proved that they were actually going to go through with it, their punishments will be very light. They will be free to go out and about and when she listens for their stories she knows that they aren’t really half as sorry as they claim to be and that there will be more girls. She’ll have to keep watching them, and she won’t be able to do that all the time.

 

And there was a moment, in the park, when she stood cloaked in shadow with her eyes glowing red and looked at them and just saw frightened children. Then she thought of the unconscious child they’d left in the bedroom and the fear she would have felt and how much of her life she might have gone on feeling it for, and pressed on with what had to be done. But she has yet to return from an expedition like this laughing and exhilarated as Sherlock and Joanna so often do.

 

Still. When she thinks of all the people who would find the reality of Nightmare Girl utterly ridiculous, and all the people that she’s nevertheless managed to protect, she can’t help but smile, just a little bit.

 

As she’s passing the greengrocer’s she stumbles suddenly, her hand flying out to the bus stop she’s thankfully beside to steady herself. Then she looks around her, concerned and alert. She felt…something. A story? Possibly. But – different. _Wrong._

 

She looked carefully at the fruit on display in the greengrocer’s, in case there was a poisoned apple. That would explain it. But she didn’t see anything and –

 

She shakes her head and takes an involuntary step back. Then she marches back to Baker Street as fast as she can manage. The sense of evil has dissipated, but the memory of it sits in her brain, like nothing else she’s ever felt. She needs to let the girls know, she decides. Somehow or other. She just hopes she can find a way of explaining it without giving away too much.


	8. Chapter 8

**i.**

 

Molly peers up from under Janine’s desk. ‘Are you really, really sure this is a good idea?’ she says.

 

‘Of course not!’ Janine says. ‘It’s obviously a terrible idea. I just don’t have a better one, do you?’

 

‘We could just _ask_ Mary,’ Molly says.

 

‘If it’s true, she’s not gonna tell us, is she?’ Janine says.

 

‘I guess not,’ Molly admits. ‘But you said you didn’t find any files on her in Magnussen’s office, or at his special secret house.’

 

‘No,’ Janine says. ‘Actually, that’s the strangest thing, I didn’t find any –‘ She cuts herself off, and starts typing rapidly. Molly curls up a little smaller, and a moment later hears a beep and then the door swing open.

 

‘Evening, Janine,’ Magnussen says. He passes close to the desk and Molly sees his smart shoes passing, then the underside of his arm as it darts out towards Janine’s head. She doesn’t know what he does, but Janine’s legs cross at the ankle and dig hard into the floor, and Molly feels a stab of sudden rage.

 

‘Good evening, sir,’ Janine says. ‘The files you requested are waiting in the inner office. Would you like some tea?’

 

‘I _have_ got you well trained, haven’t I?’ Magnussen says. ‘You don’t even flinch at the eye business any more. I’ll have to think of something else.’

 

Janine gives a small, false, tinkling laugh. ‘You did do it a great deal while I was at Appledore, sir. I suppose I got used to it.’

 

‘Yes. That recreation was all that made the stay bearable,’ Magnussen says, shaking his head. ‘A two-day meeting at my own house with that insufferable Lady Smallwood. But I couldn’t pass it up. Two days out of her packed calendar trying to convince me to a mercy she must see now I never had any intention of showing her…oh, yes, she’ll do whatever I like now.’

 

‘Well done,’ Janine says, dullness creeping into her voice, and Magnussen’s arm darts out again.

 

‘I won’t want any tea just yet,’ he says, and walks over to the door in the far corner, disappearing through it.

 

‘Are you all right down there?’ Janine whispers.

 

‘I’m fine,’ Molly whispers back, though she knows she’ll be aching tomorrow if she stays under here much longer.

 

Time passes slowly after that. Molly’s limbs become stiff and she loses herself in her thoughts. Which is something she’s been trying to avoid recently. Sherlock would doubtless disapprove of Molly’s retreat into routine, the way she focuses solely on whatever task she’s at and tries not to think beyond it, but it’s partly Sherlock’s fault, so…

 

It isn’t as though Molly didn’t know what she was getting into, or even that Sherlock didn’t warn her. _It could take years_ , she said. _And I might not come back at all._ Molly had known that years of keeping a secret like that, of watching people in pain she could alleviate and choosing not to, would do something to her. She’d known that getting embroiled in Sherlock’s world, which she’d always watched wide-eyed from a distance, would change her. She hadn’t known how, and she’d chosen to take the risk anyway. Not because Sherlock had looked right at her like she never did and said _I need you_ , or words to that effect, not because Sherlock had upped her efforts and outdone herself in manipulation. More because Molly had looked past that, and seen that Sherlock was really desperate, and despite everything been moved.

 

And now – now lying in this office and keeping quiet makes her think of how quiet she’d kept when Jem, the night they broke up, had stroked Molly’s throat and said _It’s been fun, you have no idea how fun._ The shadow of Janine’s chair across her face makes her think of standing in the shadow of the hospital and looking out across the empty road and the place where the body had been, awash with the enormity of what she’d done. And the feel of the hard wood against her hair against her cheek makes her think of her trip to the seaside with Tom, being as self-consciously quaint as possible and laughing at each other, and, after that, self-consciously romantic: lying on a jetty together with her face dampened by the wood, her hair ruffled by the salted breeze and her body warmed by his encircling arms.

 

Sometimes she misses everything about him, and sometimes she mostly misses their dog, who Tom got to keep on the grounds that Molly already had a cat and couldn’t look after both by herself. In theory of course she could go over, Tom said she was welcome to any time, but on the whole she prefers to stay at home and miss the dog than go over and miss the relationship.

 

He was right to end it. She knows that, really. Unlike just about everyone else she’s ever dated or even fancied, Tom’s nice, and he was too nice to pretend to feel something he no longer did. She wonders if it came on slowly, if he went to work and came home each day and looked at her with a strange sense that something was slipping away but not knowing what, or whether he just woke up one day, watched her dressing for work from the bed and thought, _oh dear, I don’t think I love her any more._

The wondering is not only painful, but stupid, because she knows how it happened. She was there, and Tom was, again, too nice to hold back his feelings and then drop the final bombshell on her; there were multiple conversations in the months that led up to their breakup. _At the risk of sounding like a self-help book, do you feel like we’ve grown apart lately? Sometimes it’s like you’re not even really in the room. I don’t mean to sound like a girl, but what are you thinking? What are you_ really _thinking?_

At first Molly hadn’t worried that much, thinking _Surely Sherlock must come back soon. She must be almost done._ And then, grimly: _if she hasn’t come back in another six months, then it must mean_ – and, shying away from that thought – _it won’t matter if I tell him then._ She’d been sure that things would be fine after that – Tom would be hurt that she’d kept it from him, but he’d understand that lives had been at stake.

 

Except then, of course, there were more secrets. And she had to recognise the fact that she was looking for them, holding them close, in some way _enjoying_ having them even as they stressed her half to death. She had to recognise, too, that she had become part of this ridiculous world Sherlock and Jo inhabited, and that Tom wasn’t part of it. She’d told herself that was fine, that it was some slightly unusual version of a couple having separate interests, which was supposed to be healthy, wasn’t it?

Until, one day: _It’s not even the secrets. Yeah, I know there’s still secrets, I know the kind of people you hang out with, you expect me to believe Sherlock was the only thing you were hiding? Look, sorry, I meant to stay calm for this. The thing is, it’s what the secrets are doing to you. I wish you’d tell me but if you can’t then I understand that, but it’s everything else. I feel like I barely know you any more. And I can’t – Molls, I mean, I can’t, you know, love someone I don’t know._

The buzzer goes, for which Molly is profoundly grateful, even though it makes her jump and flail and she nearly hits her head on the underside of the desk. ‘Mary!’ she hears Janine exclaim. ‘What on earth are you doing here? Really? But you know I can’t let you in. That’s so sweet of you – oh, they’re beautiful – but I honestly can’t do it. I’m really sorry. I finish in a couple of hours if you’re around, we could do something – oh. All right. I am honestly really sorry, I just can’t.’

 

A moment later, Janine’s upside down head appears under the desk, hair dropping down. Molly giggles quietly and Janine grins at her. ‘Turned up with flowers for our “one-week anniversary”,’ she says. ‘Seriously, is there something about me that just screams “total sap”? Do I look like someone who wants to be proposed to after three weeks or brought one-week anniversary flowers at work? Don’t answer that. I prefer to think I’m just surrounded by nutters who don’t know how normal human relationships work. Anyway, as you heard, I said no, so let’s see what she does next.’

 

Janine’s head flips up again, and Molly reaches to try and rub some life into her increasingly numb limbs. Then she catches sight of a flash of movement, and sees Mary standing by the open window, dressed in black leather, and raising a paperweight above Janine’s head.

 

Molly moves fast, has to, clumsy though she so often is. She feels her torso scrape the hard corner of the desk and suspects she’s cut herself but doesn’t feel it as she throws herself at Mary and knocks her to the ground. The paperweight rolls across the floor.

 

‘What the hell?’ Mary gasps, sitting upright.

 

‘You were going to _hit her over the head_?’ Molly says, horrified. She realises now that she didn’t, really, expect anything to happen. Mary breaking in is a shock in itself, but the idea that she was about to hurt Janine…

 

‘Just knock her out,’ Mary says, crossly, trying to get up, but Molly keeps her pinned down. ‘I knew what I was doing. There’d have been no lasting damage.’ Then a shadow of pain crosses her face. ‘This must seem awful to you,’ she says. ‘It must seem – oh, God.’ She puts her head in her hands, sighs into them, and raises it again. ‘Let me up, Molly,’ she says.

 

Molly shakes her head, and a moment later finds herself flat on her back, with Mary standing up. ‘I’m sorry,’ Mary says. ‘I really am. But I can’t let you get in my way.’

 

And she draws a gun.

 

Molly freezes in place. But Janine – Janine takes a step towards Mary.

 

‘Don’t come any nearer,’ Mary warns.

 

‘You won’t shoot me,’ Janine says, and takes a step nearer again.

 

Mary’s finger moves, minutely. Molly launches herself at Mary’s legs. The blast of the gunshot is horrifically loud in the small office.

 

Molly realises she’s shut her eyes, and opens them. The first thing she sees is the bullet buried in the ceiling, the second Mary, stock still, eyes fixed on Janine.

 

‘You – you fired,’ Janine says.

 

‘I warned you!’ Mary says, sounding close to hysterical. Molly’s never heard her anything but composed before. Then Mary sinks to the floor and sits against the wall, her hands trembling. ‘Do you know what happens to people who make empty threats in my – in the world I used to – do you know what happens if people don’t take you seriously?’ She sounds as though she might be about to cry, and despite everything Molly feels a ridiculous urge to comfort her.

 

‘You would have shot me,’ Janine says, voice still sounding dull.

 

‘Non-fatal, if that’s any consolation,’ Mary says, in a tone which Molly thinks is an attempt at sounding like her usual self. It comes out bizarre, wry-ish and choked with tears. ‘I would never have killed you. Not for anything. You have to believe that. I wanted to disable you long enough to – to do what I came here to do. After that I would have had time to find a way to convince you not to tell anyone. I’m persuasive when I’m not in a state like tonight. I’m…out of practice, and I’m fucking exhausted. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

 

 _Get away from her, Janine_ , Molly thinks. _She’d have shot you, that’s definitely not forgivable._ But she knows full well that’s not what she’d have ended up doing in Janine’s place, and as she watches, Janine doesn’t run, but moves closer.

 

‘And what did you come here to do?’ she says.

 

‘To kill Magnussen,’ Mary says. ‘Or he’ll hold who I was over my head for the rest of my life.’

 

‘Why isn’t he here, incidentally?’ Molly says. ‘Surely he must have heard the gunshot.’

 

Janine shakes her head. ‘Ridiculous levels of soundproofing in here,’ she says. ‘Keep all the secrets in. Mary, do you really have to kill him? Can’t you just destroy his files?’ She sounds alarmingly pragmatic, which is probably the right approach to take with a semi-hysterical assassin, though Molly doesn’t know that she could manage it herself.

 

‘I broke into his vaults at his house a week ago,’ Mary says. ‘There was nothing there. I don’t know where he keeps his files, and anyway, he doesn’t need them. If he wanted me prosecuted he’d need proof, but he doesn’t have to do that. All he’d have to do is put the story in his fucking paper and people would come looking for me.’

 

‘I couldn’t find any files on you anyway, when I looked,’ Janine muses. ‘I couldn’t find any files on _anyone_.’

 

‘Like I said,’ Mary says, ‘he doesn’t need files, a lot of the time, to wreck someone’s reputation. I guess he doesn’t bother to keep many.’

 

‘ _Any_ ,’ Janine stresses. ‘Any at all. That must be why Sherlock’s plan didn’t work. All right, what about your powers? Couldn’t they help somehow?’

 

‘How?’ Mary demands. ‘It’s not like Jo or Sally, all my powers’ll give me is a better gun.’

 

‘There must be some…’ Janine says.

 

'Do you think I haven't considered it?' Mary says. 'I've been spinning stories in my head for weeks. I could have Magnussen be a terrorist and me the SIS agent sent to take him down. He could be a mad scientist, this his lair, and me the intern who realises what he's up to and has to stop him. He could be the head of the CIA who turns out to be a traitor and who I have to take out. But you know what all those stories have in common? They all end with me shooting him in the head. Spy stories and thrillers are, ultimately, about killing people. I should know.'

 

Molly looks away from her and stares out of the window. God save her from brilliant loners. She doesn't need this, she should back away. But...'You know what else those stories have in common?' she says. 'They all involve you working alone.'

 

'Yeah,' Janine says. 'And they all make you out to be...kind of a hero? Which, no offence, you know I love you, but you did almost just shoot me. The stuff Magnussen's got on you, the things you've done– how bad were they?'

 

At first Mary looks away, but then she meets Janine's eyes. 'They were terrible,' she says. 'And you wouldn't love me if you knew about them.'

 

'Yeah, well, I'll be the judge of that,' Janine says, 'when you tell me, which you're gonna. Human beings are fucked up; you'd be surprised at what idiots like me can love. Did you have an idea, Molly?'

 

'I think...' Molly says. 'Yep, you're right, Janine, the hero thing is...important, I think. I've watched Jo work a lot and in these stories, generally speaking, heroes win and villains lose, and like you said, Mary, in spy stories losing means you die. And we don't want anyone to die. So what if we don’t make Magnussen a villain, then…’

 

'How would that help?' Mary says. 'How would _anything_ help except killing him? The stuff I need gone is in his head, Molly. If I bribe him or threaten him I'll spend the rest of my life afraid that he'll change his mind. As long as he knows what he does...and what about all his other victims? He deserves to die.'

 

Molly shakes her head. She doesn't believe that, but she doesn't know how to explain why, except with the plaintive, naïve, _no one deserves to die_. To which she knows Mary would say: _and yet everyone does._

They all go quiet for a while, except that Molly watches Mary and sees that she’s getting restless, that they’re running out of time. 'I don't get it, though,' Molly says, breaking the silence, 'the keeping all the information in his head thing. I mean, what if someone decided to take him on, said publish and be damned, and sued him for libel? He wouldn't be able to prove any of it. I get with you, Mary, you couldn't do that because people would come and try to kill you, but if it were a secret that would just ruin someone's reputation...'

 

'He picks his victims carefully,' Janine says. 'I see them in here. They're mostly anxious people, or diplomatic people, people who aren't naturally confrontational. And if he did ever need the evidence he'd know where to look.'

 

'So we need a fake secret,' Molly says.

 

'Sherlock tried that,' Janine says. 'Magnussen can spot that stuff in a heartbeat.'

 

'Unless...' Molly says, the glimmerings of an idea coming to her. 'Unless it was really convincing. If he saw it with his own eyes, and it was too big a secret to resist...'

 

'How could we possibly achieve that?' Mary says, and then, even as she speaks, she realises. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘With a story.’

 

*

 

Molly shuts the door of her flat, and the three of them collapse onto the sofa, giggling. Mary is the Mary Molly knows again, precise and organised but warm, amusing and easy to amuse, wry and affectionate. Molly doesn’t think it’s an act, or only an act, or that Mary is capable of anything so simple as just entirely faking a personality. Remembering the last two years, Molly’s well aware that a mask worn day in and out has a tendency to extend feelers under the skin.

 

‘You were incredible,’ Mary says. ‘If I was still in the business I’d want you as partners.’

 

Janine pulls a face. ‘God, thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted to be told I’d make a good assassin.’

 

Mary’s expression sobers. ‘It’s thanks to you I’m _not_ an assassin all over again,’ she says. ‘I would have killed him, if you hadn’t…’ She squeezes their hands. ‘Besides,’ she adds, ‘c’mon, you’ve got to admit it was pretty great.’

 

They look at each other and burst out laughing again. ‘Yeah, all right, it felt good,’ Janine admits. ‘Standing in his office and begging him to let me leave the job in exchange for information, leading him to Molly’s lab, him thinking he’d got me right where he wanted me…’

 

‘And your story,’ Molly says, giggling harder at the absurdity of it all. ‘All those codes he had to solve to get into my _secret lab_ , and me in a blood drenched lab coat, performing experiments on kidnapped victims, all to try and convince Sherlock I was a genius and get her to love me…’

 

‘Apparently my thrillers are less believable than Dan Brown,’ Mary says ruefully. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be a bestseller, somehow.’ And it’s not really that funny, but they’re all laughing again, bright all the way through with victory.

 

‘Your pleading for mercy was _masterful_ , Molly,’ Janine says. ‘I half expected you to get on your knees.’

 

‘Might’ve been overkill,’ Molly says, and Janine says, ‘Nah, he’d have bought anything by then,’ and that seems hilarious too.

 

Once Mary and Janine have gone home – or quite possibly, Molly suspects, they’ve both gone to Mary’s home – Molly pours herself a glass of wine and sits down on the sofa with Toby to watch whatever crap happens to be on TV at this time of night. Coming down from her triumph, she reminds herself that they have, of course, got a long way to go. There’s the court case, the unravelling of Magnussen’s web of secrets. But Molly imagines it spreading out before her, and is confident that their plan will work. And then, once he’s lost, no one will ever believe him again. His secrets will be useless: he can reveal any truth he likes, and no one will listen. If he prints Mary’s story the world-wise, cynical people who want to hurt her will roll their eyes and say _oh yes, the notorious fraudster says he’s found her,_ that’s _worth a trip to a highly policed region for._

 

A chill runs through her. It is, she realises, not altogether unlike what Jem did to Sherlock. True, this story didn’t end with a suicide, but the pattern till then is...similar.

 

‘What else could I do?' she says aloud. 'If we could prove to people that he’s a blackmailer we would, but we can’t so we’re proving him a fraud instead. Yes, it's a lie, but the truth’s even worse. And it's still better than Mary killing him, isn't it?'

Toby bats his head against her hand. Molly buries it in his fur, and reaches out with her other hand to turn on the TV.


	9. Chapter 9

** **

**i.**

 

When Sherlock comes back, she’s not alone. John, who hasn’t seen Irene since she was sitting in their living room in Sherlock’s dressing gown three years ago pretending to be afraid, folds her arms and says ‘Hello’ as pointedly as she can.

 

‘She insisted on coming,’ Sherlock says, shutting the door. Irene sits in Sherlock’s chair and tucks her feet under her body. John shifts in her own chair, and Sherlock takes the sofa.

 

‘Jo…’ Sherlock says, looking not herself, somehow, and definitely sounding not herself, hesitant and strange. John restrains herself from glaring at Irene.

 

‘Sherlock knows you’re the Bakerloo Witch and she’s upset,’ Irene says.

 

‘ _Upset?_ ’ Sherlock says indignantly, as the same time as John gets to her feet again, staring at Irene, and says, ‘You told her.’

 

‘Since when do I have to be _told_ things?’ Sherlock says, getting up as well. Irene, with a light, mocking movement, copies them.

 

‘How long have you known?’ John says, because there’s no point denying anything now.

 

‘I worked it out just before I left,’ Sherlock says. ‘I needed to think.’ Her voice is guarded, and as usual she’s revealing nothing of how she feels, if she feels anything. John has seen Sherlock’s feelings hurt, seen her shutter at an insult, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that any of them go deeper than irritation or indignation or offence. Sherlock’s vanity is fragile, but the simplicity of _upset_ is…something different, and has John thrown. But then Irene doubtless chose her words carefully to be as unsettling as possible.

 

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ John says. ‘It would have put you in danger.’ Bollocks, obviously, Sherlock puts herself in danger every five minutes. And then John can’t help but add, her voice mild and unaffected by the sudden horrible surge of malice that wells up in her: ‘And if you’d been indiscreet, it would have caused –‘

 

‘Indiscreet,’ Sherlock says. ‘Oh, that’s – so you’re punishing me, how –‘

 

‘Inevitable?’ Irene suggests, and they both turn on her.

 

‘Don’t you get involved,’ John snaps. ‘What would you know about it? You told everyone.’

 

‘And the world hasn’t ended,’ Irene points out.

 

‘Because you don’t do anything with your powers that would put you in danger,’ John says. ‘You don’t do anything worthwhile, you just –‘

 

‘What would you have me do?’ Irene fires back. ‘Fight crime? Have you thought at all about what that would involve?’

 

As in just about every conversation she’s ever had with Irene, John feels she’s missed a step. Irene takes in her hesitation and softens her voice slightly, which only makes it worse. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘imagine it. I’m chasing a criminal. He’s almost made it away. And then – well, let’s say he looks down and sees he’s naked, that would be a start. He stumbles, but then starts running again. I can’t turn myself into a flying android or a witch, I can’t catch up. So what then?’

 

‘I’m sure there’s something – ‘

 

‘Oh, yes, there’s something,’ Irene says. ‘People – or at any rate they look like people –begin to appear around him. People he finds attractive. They get in his way, they touch him. They slow him down. They go on touching him, whether he likes it or not, he can’t get away from them, and I catch up.’

 

John swallows. Irene gives a small nod. ‘If I’m going to do that to people,’ she says, ‘I think it should be people that want it. Don’t you?’

 

There’s nothing to say to that. John holds Irene’s gaze, then, finally, sees no alternative but to say, ‘I’m sorry.’

 

Irene waves this away. ‘Never mind that,’ she says, ‘I’m not here to talk about me.’

 

‘Stuff between me and Sherlock isn’t your business,’ John says.

 

‘And what if I can help?’ Irene says.

 

Jo is about to answer, but then it occurs to her that Sherlock hasn’t spoken for well over a minute, and that’s just unnatural. She turns her head fast, in the hope of catching Sherlock before she hides her expression. And she does: the look on Sherlock’s face is not still and blank, but John doesn’t know how to categorise the expression that is there or what it means, and it vanishes almost instantly.

 

‘Help how?’ Sherlock says.

 

‘Did you know that people write stories about you?’ Irene asks. ‘Your _fans_. They imagine all sorts of things going on.’

 

‘Yes, I saw Janine’s interview, thank you,’ Sherlock says.

 

Irene shakes her head. ‘I’m not talking about the papers, I’m talking about ordinary people. They post them online. And I’m not talking about Janine; when I said stories about you I meant you plural. Most of the stories are about…’ she gestures between John and Sherlock, and smirks.

 

‘Oh for God’s sake –‘ John starts, but then she looks at Sherlock, who looks far more shocked than John would ever have predicted.

 

‘Oh, Sherlock,’ Irene says. ‘This is why you need my help. You can’t even imagine…’ She stops, delicately bites her crimson lower lip, presses her teeth into it slowly and draws them back inexplicably unreddened by her lipstick. ‘Let me show you,’ she says. ‘The reason I’m telling you about these stories is that they’ll make my own stories ten times more powerful, mine’ll have a template to draw from directly in addition to your own fantasies. Let me put you into one.’

 

‘Why on earth would we do that?’ John asks.

 

‘Because there are things you don’t understand,’ Irene says, looking straight at her. ‘Because your relationship with Sherlock is frayed around the edges and you only know half of why. Sherlock, meanwhile, understands all of it but thinks the situation is much more hopeless than it is.’

 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ John says.

 

‘Which is rather my point,’ Irene murmurs.

 

‘ _And_ ,’ John says, ‘I don’t see why you’d care.’

 

Irene sighs, and untucks her legs, lets them dangle to the floor. ‘Because I think something’s coming that’s worse than anything either of you have faced. And I think I – and everyone else – will be dragged into it whether we like it or not, and when you’re working to stop it you’re going to need every bit of brainpower and psychological integrity you possess. If you’re pulling yourselves and each other to pieces you won’t stand a chance against the things that are going to be playing with your minds.’

 

‘What –‘ John says. ‘I don’t understand –‘

 

‘I’ll explain,’ Irene promises. ‘Inasmuch as I really know anything. But I don’t know if whoever’s doing it will be able to sense me telling you and I don’t want to trigger – just let me help you first and then I’ll tell you everything.’ She sounds anxious now, but she can fake anything. John can’t go by that, but then what can she go by?

 

And she can’t help but be curious about these supposed stories. Thoughts of what they might involve flash through her head, heat her beneath the skin. She doesn’t understand her own reaction to this, or Sherlock’s. Irene is right, they’re hurting each other and themselves and John doesn’t quite know why, knows she’s missing something and has an idea of what it could be but has been refusing to look at it for – years now.

 

She looks at Sherlock, and tilts her head in a question. Sherlock stares at her, John’s reaction apparently a surprise. ‘I don’t mind…’ Sherlock says.

 

‘Then try it,’ John says to Irene. ‘But if we ask you to stop and you don’t, I will stop you by whatever means I have –‘

 

‘I told you,’ Irene says, ‘I don’t involve people who don’t want it. You stop wanting it, I’ll stop.’ And with no more introduction than that, without so much as a blink from Irene, the room shifts.

 

The space they were in now was small and cramped and dimly lit by a single bare bulb on the ceiling – a cupboard of some kind? Irene was nowhere to be seen, but Sherlock was definitely there: she and John were pressed up against each other with no space to move apart, John’s front to Sherlock’s back, face pressing into Sherlock’s shoulder.

 

It was already obvious that this had been a terrible idea. John was hot all over in a way that wasn’t quite accounted for the confined quarters and Sherlock’s radiating body heat. She didn’t like to think about…this sort of thing, hadn’t gone near it since – well, since the months after Irene was last in their lives. Yes, being close to Sherlock did something to her. For her. Whatever. After Irene came and went John was left reeling, unhappily aware in a way she’d never paid much attention to before that her relationship with Sherlock had strange, erratically fluid boundaries, that she felt things she didn’t…

 

She hadn’t tried to guess exactly what those things were. She’d known the answer could only be painful, and she wasn’t going to undo an identity that she’d known for most of a lifetime for the sake of someone who didn’t even –

 

The scene flickered. Somewhere, John hears Irene’s voice saying _You always do yours in linear order, don’t you? But I don’t think that’s much fun. Let’s have a flashback._

Now John was in her own room, though it seemed brighter and larger somehow. She was standing by the mirror, facing Sherlock, whose hair had become long and gleaming, and was definitely wearing a corset, black and pine green with flashes of gold and absurdly intricate, and had – John swallowed – dog tags dangling around her neck. John couldn’t make out the name on them, but there was a stain halfway up the chain that she recognised. Her heart was racing now and she turned quickly to the mirror, and saw she was wearing her old uniform. Her hair was as usual though, except for the fact that she was wearing it down, and something about that felt wrong with the uniform; her hair had never been like this when she wore the uniform for real.

 

_Yes, you’re right, it’s not…_

It shifted before her in the mirror, and now it was short and cropped. _Gorgeous, but…hm. Let’s try Sherlock for a minute._

Sherlock’s corset became a more familiar item of clothing, that obscenely tight purple shirt of hers, while the tiny skirt became lace trousers, through which John could clearly see leather knickers. Sherlock’s skin under the lace…John stared, and couldn’t stop staring as the lace rustled and shifted, and the materials switched, the knickers becoming lacy (John looked away then, as she caught a glimpse of dark hair pressing up against them) and (she looked back, couldn’t quite help herself) the trousers filling in, turning to leather. Tight leather, that outlined Sherlock’s legs and arse and – John looked away again, and thought she heard Irene laugh, soft and out of sight.

 

Trying desperately to remain controlled, she turned back and saw that the shirt had become a corset again, but the leather trousers were apparently here to stay. She listened for Irene’s story, and though it was much fainter than her own would have been, after a moment she caught it:

_‘Just this once,’ Jo had said, ‘we could leave it to the police.’_

_Sherlock had looked at her, her hair swept dramatically back from her brow, her high cheekbones catching the light, eyes silvery and piercing. ‘Is that really what you want?’ she had asked. And Jo had smiled._

_So that was how they had got here: Sherlock dressed in a corset and leather trousers and Jo, reluctantly, in uniform. The alternative had been some kind of chains-and-leather get-up, or so Sherlock said – what she knew about fitting in at a BDSM club Jo had no idea, but since it was certainly more than Jo did she’d be going along with what Sherlock suggested. As per usual._

John wanted to roll her eyes, but didn’t think the story would allow it. Of course Irene would choose this.

 

 _Should I keep your hair like this?_ Irene’s saying, or thinking, or projecting; John’s never tried whatever it is before and doesn’t know how it works. _Or –_ John felts her head prickle, and her hair was very slightly longer and slicked back. _Oh, that’s hot. Look at Sherlock, she likes it too. Well, of course she does. But I think we should keep this fun. And besides, with you two, it’s always intimacy that’s sexiest, isn’t it? Domesticity, even, dare I say it. Yes. How about…_

And suddenly John was sitting on her bed. When she twisted slightly she saw Sherlock kneeling on it behind her, and jumped. John’s view from this angle was limited, but Sherlock was still in the corset and leather trousers, her hair spilling over her shoulders. John turned her attention back to the story.

_‘What is it?’ Jo had asked, when Sherlock stepped into her room to examine her appearance and then just stood there and said nothing at all, and Sherlock had given herself an odd little shake and said, ‘I think you should curl your hair. The softness – the contrast with the uniform would be…appealing.’_

_‘Oh,’ Jo had said. Sherlock’s eyes hadn’t left her since she entered the room. ‘I don’t…I haven’t curled my hair since I was fifteen, and that was just once.’_

_‘I’ll do it,’ Sherlock had said, and they’d both looked away from each other and then back, and then Jo had giggled breathlessly for some reason, and said, ‘Yeah, fine, you’re probably brilliant at it, aren’t you?’ So now here they were, Sherlock kneeling behind where Jo sat with her legs planted firmly on the floor to keep herself grounded, a curling iron gripped tight in Sherlock’s hand._

‘So apparently you’re curling my hair,’ John tried to say, but no words came out. She supposed it wasn’t really something she’d say in the situation dictated by the story; rather stating the obvious. But she wasn’t sure if Sherlock would have been able to hear the story and John needed to get across to her what was going on: she still wasn’t moving, and when John risked a glance back at her, her eyes were darting about the room. She could have just been deducing, but to John it looked like alarm.

 

‘A BDSM club, really?’ John said. And then, prompted by a wave of story running through her, added, ‘So this is where the killer picked up her first victim, right? And you think me having curled hair is necessary for some reason.’

 

That did it. John felt Sherlock’s long fingers pulling gently at her hair, with more care than John would ever have expected, and then the heat of the curling iron close to her scalp. ‘I might need you to flirt with people for information,’ Sherlock said. ‘You can make people like you, when you feel like it. The more attractive you are the better. The curls will help.’

 

She sounded matter-of-fact and certain she knew everything, just as normal, and she was matching the story perfectly. Of _course_ she’d turn out to be good at this.

 

After that they were both quiet. John held most of her hair back while Sherlock curled it a section at a time, her hands gliding through John’s hair, parting it and changing it. John tried to think of anything but the press of fingers, light on her scalp, the back of her neck, grazing her cheek and her ear. She focused on the hard dry heat collecting between her hair and her skin instead, but then she could only think of Sherlock’s unlikely gentleness, of how easily she could burn John and how careful she was being not to, and that was worse than just considering their proximity.

 

Then she felt Sherlock’s hand cupping her chin and making her turn her face, and heard, ‘You’re done. Just let me – part your lips –‘ and John did, and then the hand was right by her mouth, applying deep red lipstick to it with the same precision and – John would _not_ think ‘tenderness’ – as with the curling iron. John sat completely still as Sherlock dabbed at her mouth with a tissue and then reapplied the lipstick, then sat back and looked at her for what felt like an age.

 

‘Will I do?’ John said at last, as lightly as she could manage with her throat as tight as it had somehow become. ‘Fit in?’ She glanced at herself in the mirror, thinking as she turned her head how close to Sherlock’s face her cheek must have come, and frowned. The curls and the lipstick made the look obviously fake, obviously a game, obviously about sex. No one had ever gone to war looking like this. And yet it didn’t irritate her as she’d thought it might, or didn’t only irritate her. Her lips were too thin for the lipstick, she thought, and her jaw too hard for the curls; she would never in a million years have made herself look like this. It was all Sherlock. Perhaps that was why…or perhaps it was that the person looking at her out of the mirror had her mouth set in a hard line, and she might not look like a soldier but she looked, nevertheless, as though she might have weapons of a kind.

 

John looked back at Sherlock in time to see her mouth curl sideways. ‘You have no idea, do you? When the people there see you…’ She tilted her head slightly. ‘I don’t know that _fit in_ is quite how I’d put it. But I don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting the information we want.’

 

‘I think you might be being a bit optimistic,’ John said, trying to shift backwards slightly to put more space between their faces without falling off the bed. ‘Flirting with men at normal clubs is one thing, but this…’

 

‘Hm,’ Sherlock said. ‘Yes, it will be different. And you may need to approach women too, which is similarly out of your comfort zone. You should be able to manage it, though. Just seek out the submissives, and –‘ she paused. ‘Try and…be the way you are when you pull rank.’

 

If it were anyone else, John would say Sherlock looked embarrassed. More likely it was frustration at John being slow on the uptake. ‘Commanding,’ John said.

 

‘Yes, but in an unassuming way, it’s – I’m not sure I can explain. Clearly it comes to you naturally, so try to find whatever way of thinking allows you to do it.’ She moved abruptly, sliding off the bed and getting to her feet in one smooth motion. ‘We should get going.’

 

_And then you go to the club – actually, let’s have another story for a minute –_

They were in an ordinary-looking kitchen-diner, seated at the table, which was laid for five people, though there was no one else in the room. John and Sherlock were sitting side by side, and their hands were resting on the table, clasped together.

 

Sherlock looked at her expectantly, and she ignored the way her pulse was hammering, so hard she’d almost expect Sherlock’s fingers, inches from her wrist, to feel it there. She listened.

 

_Sherlock stood on the cliff, profile majestic against the horizon, gazing out to sea, her hair rippled back by the wind. Then she turned slowly back to look at Jo, standing some way back, hands in her pockets._

_‘What are you looking for?’ Jo asked. ‘I thought the case was solved.’_

_‘It is,’ Sherlock said, walking towards her. ‘It’s just beautiful out here. Don’t you think?’_

_Jo nodded, her throat tight. Sherlock said, ‘Listen, there’s something I’ve meant to – I have a favour to ask.’_

_‘Yeah?’ Jo said, warily. ‘If you want to experiment on me, I appreciate you actually asking, but –‘_

_‘No,’ Sherlock said. ‘When we go to my parents’ for Christmas, I want you to pretend to be my girlfriend.’_

_Jo stared at her. ‘What? Why?’_

_Sherlock rolled her eyes. ‘They think I’m lonely,’ she said, in tones of utmost derision. ‘They’re always trying to set me up with people in the village. I can’t bear another year of it.’_

Ah. Well, this at least they’d done once before, for a case, but that had only been for five minutes while talking to a suspect. John had no idea how long this would go on for.

 

‘Are your parents really going to be fooled?’ she said to Sherlock. ‘If they’re anything like you they’ll be able to tell I’m not really your girlfriend in five seconds, and then you’ll be right back to being set up with their friends’ children again, plus in trouble for lying.’

 

Sherlock didn’t answer. John followed her gaze and saw that she was staring down at their joined hands, her fingers curling to hold tighter, her knuckles turning whiter as John’s hand began to hurt from the squeezing grip.

 

She thought of asking Sherlock to let go, but found as soon as she considered it that she didn’t want that –very much didn’t want that, the feeling shockingly clear and defined. She searched the room frantically for signs of Irene, who must be here somewhere, to tell her that this was enough and it had to stop now, but knew she didn’t really want that either.

 

Sherlock looked up at last, looked right at her, and the hand still clinging hard to John’s was now shaking. It shook a little more as Sherlock leaned towards her and kissed her once, chastely, on the mouth. ‘Practice,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to be affectionate. Make it look real.’

 

‘You’re shaking,’ John said, although she couldn’t be completely certain that it _was_ Sherlock shaking and not her. Sherlock flinched, and pulled her hand away.

 

_Or how about –_

The cold air hit John out of nowhere, seeping straight into her flesh. They were in some kind of industrial freezer, and they were naked, clasping each other while buried in a pile of their clothes. She could feel Sherlock’s cold skin everywhere and if this were real she’d be afraid they were about to die and she knew with utterly unwanted certainty how near she would burrow, how she would put her lips to Sherlock’s shoulder and search for words and, when she couldn’t find them, simply open her mouth and press the useless silence into Sherlock’s skin –

 

_Or –_

Stories couldn’t change what you thought or how you felt, couldn’t get inside your head, could only affect what happened to you. But this story flashed London streets past them, moved their legs and they were running, running, and then it whirled and changed and they were leaning against the wall, _that_ wall at the bottom of the stairs and John couldn’t _not_ feel the rush of adrenaline and bubbling warmth, couldn’t not laugh and then gaze at Sherlock with everything she felt simmering under her skin, and the story was pushing them nearer and nearer to one another and she thought _yes it’s true, of course this could have happened, any one of those thousands of times I might have leaned just like this – I did want to, didn’t I, come on it’s not as if this is a surprise – I could have put my head forward near Sherlock’s head and I could have –_

_Not so fast,_ comes Irene’s voice. _I want to see how the others play out._

They were in a club, although not one like anything John had been to before. The music was quieter, most people didn’t look drunk, the clothes were unusual to say the least, and not two metres from them there was a man standing over another man, bringing a paddle down towards him.

 

John looked down, saw she was in uniform again, and a touch to her hair confirmed the feel of the curls there, sleek and perfectly shaped and entirely unlike her usual hair. She didn’t know whether looking at Sherlock in the outfit she was presumably in again now was a good idea, but then Sherlock didn’t say anything for long enough that John felt she had to check she was all right.

 

The look on Sherlock’s face almost undid her. John couldn’t think of any way to read it except the obvious, and it was directed not at the bodies and pain and pleasure around them but unmistakeably, fiercely at John. Could the story have put it there? John’s breath was coming short, and as she drew nearer – she was moving, she didn’t remember deciding to move, but she was walking and Sherlock was very close now – she saw that Sherlock was breathing shallowly too.

 

‘What is it?’ John said, and her voice came out as barely more than a whisper. ‘What are you seeing?’

 

Sherlock let out a small bark of cracked laughter, and shook her head.

 

_Getting there._

They were lying in a double bed together, face to face, _because of course since Sherlock’s parents believed Jo and Sherlock were a couple, it was assumed they’d be sharing the double in the guest room. Neither of them had been able to think of a way out of it, and besides it was hardly a big deal. Friends shared beds sometimes; it was normal._

John and Sherlock didn’t, though. Or at least they never had. Beyond the bed it was a cold day, presumably in December, but within it felt hot and they were so close, it made John ache and miss – she shouldn’t still be missing, she had Sherlock back, and anything else that she might want hadn’t been there to begin with, and she’d chosen not to mind that, not to pursue it, she’d got past this, she’d forgotten she’d ever thought of it –

 

‘I can’t bear this,’ Sherlock said, abruptly. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m sorry.’ She got out of bed and walked to the window, put her hands on the sill and held it. Her pyjamas were light, loose over her body but clinging slightly to her arms. It made John feel protective, made her want to touch.

 

She sat up in bed. ‘We can leave right now,’ she said. ‘You can text your parents and we can ring and explain properly tomorrow.’ She hoped Sherlock understood that she meant they could tell Irene to stop. But then Sherlock must be wondering why John hadn’t already done exactly that.

 

‘Explain what?’ Sherlock said, her back still to the room.

 

‘We’ll think of something. You got ill, or a case came up – it doesn’t matter. I know this has turned out to be weirder than we thought, and I don’t want you to be…unhappy.’

 

Sherlock turned back at last and looked at her. ‘I wasn’t unhappy,’ she said.

 

‘I know, but I just meant – being, you know, so close, in confined quarters or however you want to – you seemed uncomfortable.’

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said. ‘Not unhappy. Don’t you _know_?’ She looked hard at John, then shook her head and then, as if suddenly punctured, she slid slowly down the wall to the floor and put her arms round her knees. ‘That – just then – what we were – that was never going to make me unhappy. But the longer I stayed the more it would have been…when it was over, it would – look, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a sofa bed in the living room. I’ll say I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to disturb you.’

 

Sherlock was staying in character, John realised, more so than was really demanded by the story. Details about sofa beds and so on were hardly necessary. John understood the urge; there was something about letting yourself be carried along by a story that was seductive, fascinating. Not knowing quite what you’d say next, or where you’d end up.

 

But this story was a dangerous one. It was clear, too, that John was only being allowed to hear it from her own point of view. How it looked to Sherlock was a mystery. But clearly, for whatever reason, there was something in it that was making Sherlock want to play along, find out what happened.

 

John got out of bed and crossed the room. ‘It’s not a big…thing, you know,’ she said. ‘Like we discussed, friends share beds, it’s, you know, it happens. ‘

 

‘I’m not worrying about whether it’s _normal_ ,’ Sherlock snapped. ‘When have I _ever_ done that? You’re confusing me with yourself. In fact I’m amazed you agreed to share a bed in the first place, though you’ve been constantly reassuring yourself with _It’s normal_ s, haven’t you? But I suppose I should be impressed that you got through a whole Christmas weekend pretending to be in a relationship with me without once saying _I’m not gay._ ’

 

John felt herself going pale. Her hands clenched a bit, halfway to fists. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t have a clue.’

 

Sherlock held her gaze, defiant. John forced her hands to uncurl again, forced herself to speak. ‘Yeah, I care what people think. I know you don’t give a shit, and that’s – I mean fine, yeah, it’s got it’s advantages, but then you go and fucking jump of buildings and are surprised when people care so I think there’s some flaws in the system, is what I’m saying, I don’t think you get to be all that fucking smug –‘

 

‘Jo,’ Sherlock said, her expression changing. She looked like she might be thinking about standing up and coming nearer, so John took two quick steps back.

 

‘I liked…’ she tried, and then had to start again. ‘When we became friends. I liked that you didn’t care, and it made me care – not as much. Or at least, I wound up caring what you thought more than what anyone else did. And then…’ she shrugged. ‘I was only just realising what it might mean, to care about you as much as I did, and then, well –‘ she smiled, or she thought she was smiling, and sat down again, turning slightly away from Sherlock, unable to stand looking at her for this – ‘then events made what it meant brutally clear. No one wants to find out they can’t cope with something, Sherlock, and I certainly didn’t.’

 

‘I’ve run out of things to say about it,’ Sherlock said, very quietly.

 

‘I know,’ John said. Her blood was quick now, the adrenaline was up, and she pushed on before it ran out. No more secrets. She started, ‘Mary helped me sort out some of it, when you were gone. We…’ and then found she couldn’t say it.

 

But of course actually saying things was never required with Sherlock, who drew in a sharp breath and looked at the floor. ‘I missed that,’ she said. ‘How –‘ but the room was shifting again, and all John hears from Irene this time is a melodic, vaguely sinister humming, the tune to some song that’s been in the charts lately that John doesn’t know the name of. And then they were back in the cupboard, pressed together. And it was unbearable, unthinkable then for John not to wrap her arms around Sherlock’s back and pull her close, and Sherlock went stiff and still in her arms and John kissed the back of her neck and held her even closer.

 

The story tried to intrude, to explain why there were there, but John was no longer interested. ‘I just wanted you close,’ she muttered to the back of Sherlock’s head. She felt words swim towards her mouth, and told herself, _it’s a story, it doesn’t matter._ She ignored the fact that, though the distinctive texture of her uniform was still there against her body, the curls were no longer tickling the back of her neck, that the story was turning in on itself and changing. If she looked at herself now she knew she’d see herself from years ago, short hair and uniform and sure of what she wanted. But this world was small and dark and mirrorless enough for her not to think about that certainty or what it symbolised. Like this, in a place that wasn’t quite real, with Sherlock unable to look at her, was as easy as it was ever going to get. ‘I stopped minding about the rules for friendships, about what we were and what we weren’t. I realised that day at the pool that I’d die for you, and I realised after Irene did her stuff that the way I felt about you wasn’t…I don’t know. I didn’t know how to compare it to anything else. I didn’t know what to do with it and I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with that kind of, um, sentiment, so I just tried not to think about it, and then…’

 

Sherlock didn’t say anything. She just stood there, frozen, though John could feel her breathing, shallower than ever. And John was out of things to say. She buried her head against Sherlock’s shoulder, and then Sherlock spun in her arms, dug her nails into John’s back through the uniform, and kissed her.

 

The kissing was messy and quick-moving, full of bites and pulling at lips and their hands pressing hard at each other’s bodies. Then Sherlock drew back just enough to part their mouths and said, ‘Let me – can I touch you – please,’ and John would have thought she’d need to think about it but she gasped _Yes, yes,_ and then Sherlock’s hands were scrabbling at her buttons before slipping inside and landing on her, in her.

 

In some ways it was like Mary. The fact that they were in darkness, the roughness, the quickness of it, that was the same, but without the oppressive grief that had loomed unwatchably enormous through those encounters. Or – no, all right, perhaps the grief would never be gone altogether, but this – the heat of Sherlock’s fingers and in Sherlock’s eyes, she was alive and here and seemed to want this and it was nothing like anything else that had ever happened –

 

John came, and the story came apart.

 

They’re back in the living room, no longer pressed together but still standing far too close. John takes a step back and looks about her, and sees no sign of Irene.

 

‘Well, that was strange,’ she says lightly, in a bizarre, desperate attempt to make things normal, and regrets it at once as Sherlock’s still heated expression immediately vanishes into blankness. ‘I didn’t mean –‘ John starts, but she’s interrupted by the front door opening.

 

Mrs. Hudson steps through, looking oddly purposeful, followed by Sally. ‘I ran into Sally on my way home from the shops,’ Mrs. Hudson says. ‘She was on her way over too. We need to talk to you.’

 

‘Now?’ Sherlock says. ‘I can’t imagine it’s –‘

 

‘Now,’ Sally says, and her tone makes John shiver. ‘We think something’s wrong – worse than – I mean wrong with _everything,_ with the whole fabric of…’

 

‘Or it’s getting that way,’ Mrs. Hudson puts in. ‘It may not be –‘ she freezes.

 

‘What is –‘ John says, and then she feels it, the shivers up her spine getting closer together and harder. ‘What the hell –‘

 

‘There are stories,’ Sally says frantically. ‘They can get in your head and they’re not – listen, we’ve got to –‘

 

The room was dark, and full of small coloured lights that circled them, danced like fairies.

 

‘Try and fight it,’ Mrs. Hudson says, sounding frantic.

 

The room was bright, lit by the fire and the dimming light outside. Through the gloom outside the window Jo could just about make out the edge of the Kingdom in the far distance, the shadows that marked the beginning of the Dark Forest.

 

‘Fight what?’ Jo said.

 

Mrs. Hudson stood from the sofa and bent over. Jo rose in alarm, but then she straightened most of the way, though still sagged slightly. ‘I –‘ she said. ‘I –‘ Her face was twisted as if in pain, and Jo hurried to her, reaching out. Then suddenly the expression disappeared, Mrs. Hudson straightened fully, and said, ‘The dragon, of course.’


	10. Chapter 10

**i.**

 

‘Primary suspect?’ Sherlock asked, straightening up from the woman’s body.

 

They were the first words she’d said since she arrived at the scene. She’d come whirling down the steps from the bridge to the river’s edge, coat flaring behind her like some bloody ridiculous Hero cape, Jo running behind her. She’d stopped, glanced at Lestrade and her team standing around the body, treated them to a brief disdainful glare, and then bent down to examine the corpse. Now, apparently, she was deigning to ask for information.

 

‘Her older sister,’ Lestrade said, bracing herself for a detailed explanation of why she was an idiot. ‘The victim – her name’s Matilda Haydock, by the way – was the youngest of three, and was the kindest and most beautiful of the sisters. The oldest sister – Caroline – was always jealous, and it became unbearable when a man she was in love with fell for Matilda.’

 

Amazingly, Sherlock did not call Lestrade an idiot. She was looking uncharacteristically concerned.

 

‘Something wrong?’ Lestrade asked.

 

Sherlock shook her head. ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. There was something – a, just now, something about the way you were speaking –‘ She broke off, frustrated. ‘Never mind. It seems straightforward enough. So why am I here, Greta?’

 

‘ _Geri_ ,’ Lestrade said. To be honest, she couldn’t really blame Sherlock for forgetting her first name – sometimes both _Geri_ and _Geraldine_ felt completely alien to her, whereas _Lestrade_ she’d answer to without thinking. Still, it was the principle of the thing. Not that she expected her corrections to make so much as a dent on Sherlock’s brain, filled as it was with presumably _far_ more important things. As expected, the correction got no response, so Lestrade gave up and said, ‘Caroline Haydock has an alibi. Medical evidence has the crime down to between nine and eleven thirty ish last night, and she’s got witnesses who say she was with them all that time.’

 

‘I assume you’ve tried going to wherever she says she was and knocking three times,’ Sherlock said.

 

Lestrade restrained herself. She’d successfully managed not to punch Sherlock Holmes in the face for a number of years now. It’d be a pity to ruin that streak. But Good, the woman treated the police like they were five. Like they wouldn’t think to carry out basic procedure. ‘Yeah, amazingly enough, that idea did occur to us,’ she said. ‘But she was at a bonfire in a field. No door to knock on.’

 

‘If you can’t knock you clap three times,’ Sherlock said, impatience flaring up visibly in her face. ‘Haven’t you a braincell between you?’

 

Lestrade sighed. Sherlock’s ability to see patterns and rules and determine the threads of logic that lay behind them and where those threads must lead was why she was useful to the police. But it did mean they were constantly being lectured on failing to see what was obvious to her.

 

‘Brilliant,’ Jo said. Then: ‘Sorry, Geri.’

 

A few months into Sherlock and Jo’s cohabitation, Lestrade had realised that hearing one more ‘brilliant’ or ‘amazing’ was going to drive her beyond her endurance. In theory, Jo was banned from complimenting Sherlock at crime scenes – a ban which had been briefly lifted after Sherlock’s return from the not-actually-dead but reinstated within six weeks. In practice, all the ban actually meant was that Jo kept doing it and apologised afterwards. Sherlock’d try to look like she didn’t care, while blatantly glowing. It was sort of sweet, or at least it had been the first twenty times.

 

‘Fine,’ Lestrade said. ‘We’ll try clapping. Are you coming?’

 

She knew the answer to this. Routine investigation of alibis was so far beneath Sherlock Holmes’s stupendous mind as to be a barely visible dot. Lestrade asked just to see her scowl, and then laughed. ‘Thought not,’ she said. ‘All right, I’ll text you when we’ve done that.’

 

And Sherlock was away, in a billow of coat, Jo keeping pace beside her. Lestrade sighed again. ‘OK,’ she said to the rest of her team, none of whom looked very impressed at any of this. ‘Let’s go.’

 

*

 

**You were right. The clapping worked. Scene reappeared exactly as she described it; she was telling the truth.**

 

_Of course I was right. Are you certain she was telling the truth? Did you check all the details?_

_Wait. Why was I right?_

**What do you mean?**

**Why should clapping have the same effect as knocking?**

**I dunno, it was your idea. Anyway who cares, it worked.**

_For that matter, why should knocking at a door three times cause the building it leads into to replay all the events that took place therein in the last twenty four hours? There’s no logical link between those two things at all._

**For Good’s sake, I dont know, why is anything the way it is? “Knock three times and the building shares its truth.” Its just how things are. Ive never really thought about it, but as long as it works I dont see why it matters. Also yes weve checked details we do actually do our own jobs you know.**

_Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I won’t bother to refute your last statement. What about the other sister?_

**Looking into that now. Were looking at the man too, the one who was in love with her.**

_Fine. I’ll be in touch._

**Sherlock if you want to investigate you could just come in, you dont have to go off on your own.**

**Rephrasing that, _dont_ go off on your own. **

_Apostrophes aren’t that difficult to master, even for someone of your intellect._

Lestrade knew a brush-off when she saw one, and past experience taught her that sending any more messages now would be pointless. Which was bloody annoying, because she was well and truly stuck on this case. Yeah, Sherlock would probably reappear tomorrow morning with all the answers, but just once Lestrade’d love it if Sherlock could work with her team instead of around it and not leave Lestrade with all the paperwork at the end.

 

Well. That was never going to happen. She’d just have to keep plodding along at her own pace, and resign herself to the knowledge that whatever work she did was probably all going to be cast aside contemptuously by Sherlock in two sentences before very long.

 

*

 

In fact, Lestrade saw Sherlock sooner than she expected. She was investigating the middle sister’s house. She’d tried knocking three times, but nothing had happened: obviously someone had walked widdershins around the house at some point in the past week. Not necessarily suspicious – some people felt strongly about privacy, or it could be pure accident, but something to note.

 

The sister – Louisa Haydock – had let her in and was now standing in the far corner while Lestrade looked around the living room. She was excessively emotional, getting angry with just about everyone she knew in turn while Lestrade tried to concentrate.

 

‘Um,’ she said, after about ten minutes had elapsed. ‘By the way, did you want to talk to the other girls?’

 

Lestrade groaned. She couldn’t have mentioned this before? ‘A tall one and a short one?’ she asked.

 

‘Yeah,’ Louisa said.

 

‘Right,’ Lestrade said. ‘Where are they?’

 

‘Upstairs,’ Louisa said. ‘The one with the cheekbones said she was here with your permission. She knew your name, so I thought it was all right.’

 

‘It is all right,’ Lestrade reassured her. ‘I just hadn’t realised. I’ll go and see them now.’

 

When she got upstairs, she heard voices coming from the first door on the right: unmistakably Sherlock’s and Jo’s.

 

‘This isn’t right,’ Sherlock was saying. ‘I keep – things don’t make sense and then I forget about them. Ideas are slipping in and out of my brain, it’s all out of control, Jo, are you listening?’

 

Then Jo’s voice, soothing. ‘Sherlock, it’s fine. I’m not sure what you mean, but – it’ll be OK, all right?’

 

‘Aha!’ Sherlock said, apparently diverted from whatever she was getting upset about by a new clue. ‘I knew it.’

 

Lestrade opened the door. ‘Knew what, exactly?’ she asked.

 

Sherlock was standing on the bed in the middle of the room, examining the ceiling with a magnifier. Lestrade barely had a moment to wonder why on earth she was doing that, before Sherlock motioned to her, and she found herself reluctantly climbing up as well. Sherlock passed her the magnifier, and pointed.

 

It took Lestrade a moment, but then she saw: there was a tiny hole in the ceiling through which a flash of blue was visible, meaning that it went all the way up through the roof.

 

She drew in a breath. ‘It doesn’t prove anything,’ she said.

 

‘Of course it does,’ Sherlock said. ‘Look how neat that hole is, that was made on purpose. Have you _ever_ found anyone to have made a deliberate hole in their roof for any reason other than making indoor wishing possible?’

 

‘She’s clearly guilty of wishing without a licence; that doesn’t mean she’s guilty of murder,’ Lestrade said. ‘She could have been wishing for anything.’

 

‘Why do people wish indoors? Why go to all that trouble?’ Sherlock demanded.

 

‘Targeting,’ Lestrade said. Obviously Sherlock knew this, but sometimes she liked her rhetorical questions answered, helped her get into her stride.

 

‘Right,’ Sherlock said. ‘Wishing outside is unreliable, you might affect the wrong person. Wishing indoors, going to all the trouble of opening up a connection to the sky, means you want to target someone specific. This passage is tiny, it would have taken her a long time to make, it would have been difficult. She was very careful to make it as hard to see as possible. She didn’t want anyone to know. If she’d been wishing for something harmless she’d only have been risking a fine. She wouldn’t have taken this much trouble over secrecy.’

 

‘Still doesn’t prove she wished her sister dead,’ Lestrade said. ‘Sherlock, we’ve talked about this, I can’t arrest someone on a probability, or at least I can’t hold them very long after I do. I need actual evidence.’

 

‘There must be a way to get evidence,’ Jo said. She looked at Sherlock. ‘Any thoughts?’

 

Lestrade tried not to be irritated by that and failed. God forbid anyone consider that _she_ might have an idea. She spoke before Sherlock could. ‘I could get a warrant for tapping,’ she offered. ‘Tap the bed three times, it shares its truth, we get the past twenty four hours and if she’s made a wish then we’ll see it happen. The trouble is, I don’t think we really have enough to go on to justify the invasion of privacy. If we had a definite theory it might be all right, but I don’t understand – ’

 

‘Motive,’ Sherlock finished. ‘What was the motive? Jealousy without the extra factor of the romantic interest seems inadequate.’

 

Lestrade shook her head, puzzled. ‘Might have been very strong jealousy, or she might be evil,’ she suggested. ‘There are various possibilities.’

 

‘Evil,’ Sherlock murmured. She looked worried again, but Lestrade had a job to do, and she didn’t have time to keep asking what was going on in Sherlock’s mad head.

 

‘I’ll apply for the warrant then, if you don’t have a better idea?’ she said. ‘Though I don’t really think I’ll get it.’

 

‘Medical records?’ Jo said. ‘You’ll need a warrant for that too, though, they keep heart information locked up tight. Which is fair enough, there’s a lot of prejudice about. But…I mean, you can’t generalise too much, but if she’s evil there is a fairly high likelihood that she’ll have one made of stone or ice or coal or something, and they’ll have that on record.’

 

‘Wait,’ Sherlock said. She was staring up at the hole. ‘I spoke to Louisa Haydock downstairs. She wasn’t nervous. At least, no more nervous than people always are when the police search their houses. Nowhere near as much as you’d expect from someone with evidence of illegal wishing upstairs. She could just be a particularly cocky murderer, of course, but a deathwish is invariably the weapon of a person too afraid to carry out a crime in person – I wouldn’t expect someone who chose that method to be so brazen after the fact.’

 

‘What are you getting at?’ Lestrade demanded.

 

‘She didn’t make this,’ Sherlock said, gesturing at the ceiling. ‘She didn’t even know it was here. Someone else made it, did their wishing here to make it look like she did it.’

 

‘Who?’ Jo asked.

 

‘This hole couldn’t have been made in one session,’ Sherlock said, studying it. ‘It must have been someone who had regular access to the room, who could get in when Louisa was out. Who else lives here?’

 

‘No one,’ Lestrade said. ‘Well, Matilda did, the two of them lived together, but –‘

 

‘ _Oh_ ,’ Sherlock breathed, her face transforming as it always did when the pieces came together. ‘That’s it.’

 

‘What?’ Lestrade said.

 

‘Suicide by wish,’ Sherlock said. ‘And a framing. The antagonism went both ways. I don’t know why, but –‘

 

‘She probably got sick of always being the kindest,’ Jo said. ‘Always having to be reasonable. An identity’s hard to shake once you’ve got one. What did people you interviewed say about Louisa’s character?’

 

‘Feisty and tempestuous,’ Lestrade said.

 

‘Right,’ Jo said. ‘Her parents were probably always making excuses for her, saying she was just fiery and high-spirited and she couldn’t help it. And Matilda was the good one and always had to be good. She found a way to escape and get her revenge at the same time.’

 

Sherlock was looking at Jo with something approaching respect. _Repulsive_ , Lestrade thought momentarily, and then wondered why. She didn’t think she feltrepulsed by the idea of Sherlock actually respecting someone for once; in fact that seemed like a very good thing.

 

‘Sounds plausible,’ she said out loud.

 

‘Get your warrant,’ Sherlock said. ‘You’ve got a theory now. I guarantee you’ll see Matilda Haydock wishing in her sister’s room. Text me if there’s a problem.’

 

And she was gone again, rushing out before Lestrade could even hint at the possibility of paperwork. Not that hinting, or outright insisting for that matter, would have done any good anyway.


	11. Chapter 11

**i.**

 

There had to be a way to broach the subject. Things had been getting increasingly awkward since Queen Irene’s ball. The trouble – well, one of a number of troubles – was that Jo didn’t quite know what she wanted to say.

 

Did she want to excuse it? _It was the stroke of midnight, Sherlock, you know people do strange things then, especially_ _at a ball._ Or did she want –

 

‘I think I may have developed part of a plan to kill the dragon,’ Sherlock said from her armchair by the window.

 

Well, that was certainly a distraction. ‘What?’ Jo said. ‘You told Mrs. Hudson you wouldn’t do it!’

 

‘ _May_ have _part_ of a plan,’ Sherlock stressed. ‘I didn’t want to get her hopes up.’

 

Jo had felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment when Sherlock had told Mrs. Hudson in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t a dragon slayer. Now it was hard to know how to feel. On the one hand slaying a dragon would be the biggest adventure they’d ever had – and they’d had some good ones – besides which it was wreaking havoc on the Kingdom and demanding sacrifices of girls and definitely needed to be stopped. On the other hand, the last time Sherlock had faced up against a truly dangerous enemy…

 

‘I promise that my plan does not in any way involve faking my death,’ Sherlock said, in what Jo thought was meant to be an encouraging way.

 

‘Normal people don’t have to promise that, you know,’ Jo said, and felt immediately lighter. Even a week ago, she wouldn’t have been able to make a joke like that. Despite the awkwardness, it was possible that things were getting better between them. Now if they could only sort out that dancing, kissing-and-rather-more-at-midnight business…

 

A shadow passed by the window and Sherlock grimaced. ‘It’s the Blackbird-Woman again,’ she said. ‘She’s been swooping overhead all day.’

 

‘You will persist in referring to your own sister as _the Blackbird-Woman_ ,’ Jo muttered, then said, ‘Why don’t you go out and talk to her? You know she can’t transform unless she meets the eyes of the human she wants to speak to.’

 

'Something I have no intention of ever ceasing to take advantage of,' Sherlock said happily. 'Do you think Molly could make a potion that would make a human look like a frog? "Turn into a frog", I suppose, although I've always hated how inexact that expression is. There's an obvious difference between looking like a frog while retaining one's thoughts and feelings and memories, and a true, complete metamorphosis. But anyway, I wonder if she could. I know she's primarily a Necromancer, but there's a certain amount of transformation work involved in that... '

 

Jo narrowed her eyes. 'Why do you ask?'

 

'Mrs Hudson's a retired Fairy Godmother,' Sherlock mused. 'They're very big on transformation spells. I know she doesn't do that kind of thing anymore, but if I found the right way to ask, she _might_...'

 

'Why do you want to turn yourself into a frog?' Jo said, feeling that this point was worth persisting with.

 

'Not me,' Sherlock said. 'You. I'll be otherwise occupied.' She added, the tones of a highly reasonable person kindly granting a concession, 'It doesn't have to be a frog. A hedgehog or a centipede would do just as well. Small and not too slow, that's the ticket.'

 

'Sherlock –‘ Jo said, but Sherlock was far too busy talking to herself to pay any attention.

 

'Perhaps Sally could put me in touch with the Sea Witch, though I don't know how well they get on, and I've heard the prices are...objectionable.'

 

'I do not want to be turned into a frog,' Jo said. 'Or a hedgehog. Or a centipede. Not unless there's an _excellent_ reason of which I am _fully informed beforehand_. OK?'

 

Sherlock, finally, stopped pacing and turned to look at Jo. She tossed her tumbling hair over her shoulders, brought her hands together and steepled her fingertips. 'As you know,' she said, 'the dragon demands a monthly sacrifice of a young woman. The woman in question is brought with bound hands and ankles to the mouth of the dragon's cave, where she is left early in the evening. When the sun sets, a roar is heard through the whole of the Dark Forest and the Kingdom of London, and the unfortunate young woman is presumably eaten.'

 

'Yes,' Jo said, not sure where this was going but pretty sure she wouldn't like it.

 

'Ordinarily, sacrifices are drawn from lots,' Sherlock said. 'As Lady Mycroft's sister and the heir to Guardianship of the Dark Forest, I have previously been exempt. Tomorrow I intend to publicly renounce my inheritance and offer myself as the sacrifice for this month.'

 

'No,' Jo said. 'Absolutely not. Anyway, you're not young enough.'

 

'Acquiring a potion to make me look temporarily younger shouldn’t be any trouble, those are quite popular, and anyway, technically the term used isn’t _young women_ but _maidens_ , which is a term rather open to interpretation,' Sherlock said, avoiding Jo's eye. 'And listen before you dismiss it. The dragon can sense approaches to her territory, and when knights have tried to attack in the past they've been burned to death before getting anywhere near the cave. Only the maidens and those who deliver them have ever been able to get anywhere near. There's no other way to get there. The dragon has also proved extremely cunning at detecting weapons carried by the maiden's escort, so that's out. No one's tried giving the maidens themselves weapons, because people are idiots, but while I've considered it I think it's too risky. The dragon might detect that too, and in any case I'd have very little time to cut myself out of the ropes and prepare to attack before it ate me. Instead, I'll rely on you. You will travel, disguised as a small creature, in my pocket. The spell or potion will be calculated to wear off exactly as the dragon stands over me to eat me. You will then be positioned immediately under its belly, which is its only weak point. You will have a sword - we'll have to speak to the people I mentioned about that, but I think if you're holding a sword when you transform we should be able to have it included in the transformation package so that you’re still holding it when you change back. You stab the dragon, it dies, we go home, London's saved. What do you think?'

 

‘You can’t put yourself in that kind of danger,’ Jo said immediately. ‘I’ll do my bit, but someone else can be the sacrifice –‘

 

‘Like _who_?’ Sherlock said. Anyway, I won’t be completely defenceless; I’ll get Janine to teach me a couple of spells.’

 

Panic was rising in Jo, though she hoped she wasn’t showing it. She couldn’t help but think of the Bad Fairy and the games she’d played with Sherlock, finally culminating in the Bad Fairy burning herself up with her own magic, leaving behind a veritable army of lesser creatures of evil. So Molly the Necromancer had given Sherlock a potion that trapped her soul between life and death for eight hours, enough time for Jo and everyone else to believe her dead, and Sherlock had gone beyond the Forest to track down the creatures and hadn’t returned for two years.

 

‘I can’t do it again,’ Jo heard herself saying. ‘I just can’t, I’m sorry –‘

 

Then Sherlock’s hands were on her forearms, moving as if to stroke and then stilling, as though she’d thought better of it. ‘You won’t have to. I promise you, I won’t get myself killed. But…Jo, you know we lead dangerous lives, you can’t want us to stop –‘

 

‘No,’ Jo said, stepping back. ‘Of course not. I was being stupid, I’m sorry. It’s just…I’m not a woodcutter any more. What if I can’t do it, and you…what if I can’t protect you?’

 

She’d been a woodcutter for years, and done all the things woodcutters did – chopping down trees, carving furniture, saving girls from wolves. Until one day she’d been slower and the wolf had been cleverer than usual, and they had struggled and struggled. Jo had won in the end, but not before getting her shoulder gnawed half to pieces. She’d left her cottage on the edge of the Forest and come back to London, not knowing what to do with herself. And then she’d met Sherlock.

 

Sherlock shook her head. Then she opened her mouth, shut it, and shook her head again, harder, frowning. Then she kissed Jo very fast and suddenly on the forehead, stumbled and blinked several times as though shocked at what she’d done, and said, ‘You’re being ridiculous. I’m going to go and send a raven to Molly.’

 

**ii.**

 

Anthea sat on her booth on the edge of the Forest, tapping her nails against the side. Her friends envied her glamorous job, and how amply rewarded it was – no dubiously gold pieces or under-the-counter wish licences for her, just good solid stuff – magic beans and stones and lamps, Forest treasure maps, that kind of thing. Nevertheless, sometimes being the Border Keeper and the right hand of Lady Mycroft the Blackbird-Woman, Guardian of the Dark Forest, could be downright dull. Anthea could lose hours to laconic slumping, eyes fluttering as she surveyed the border between the Kingdom and the Forest.

 

Sometimes, however, she found ways to entertain herself. The golden sign on her booth today read _Guess My Name._ She had been amusing herself for some weeks now betting power with passers-by: if they successfully guessed her name they took some of hers, otherwise she got a bit of theirs. She hadn’t lost yet.

 

She didn’t know yet what name she’d have tomorrow. Not knowing until the last moment was essential to ensure continued victory. Most people, of course, didn’t know the trick of changing their true names, believed them as immutable as the soul. But Anthea had always found that most borders were more permeable, most masses more violable and variable, than people believed.

 

Today had been slow, though; very few visitors had passed along the border. Not that there were ever many. Most Londoners stayed well away from the Forest. It was only the woodcutters and the banished and the girls with baskets who half wanted to be lost that went out there. Besides the occasional knight seeking the dragon’s cave, but they, at least, only ever crossed the border once.

 

A shadow covered her face and she looked up, straight into bright avian eyes. A moment later the giant blackbird descended, and shifted into an equally familiar human form, clad in black. ‘Did you speak to her?’ Anthea said.

 

‘No,’ Lady Mycroft said, grimly. ‘You must come with me and get her attention however you can. Time is, increasingly, not on our side.’


	12. Chapter 12

**i.**

 

This was nothing – nothing – like anything she’d felt before. The things flowing through her were so quick and sharp it was like they were scraping at the insides of her capillaries and she never wanted them to stop. She had kissed Jo and had her hands inside her among the silk-slick ridges there and she had solved a case and now she had an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous puzzle to contemplate. It was too much, of course, but she was used to too much and this was _new_ , this particular combination of exhilarations.

 

Naturally it hurt too, when she thought about it for more than a moment. The stroke of midnight had lasted and lasted because Irene wanted it to, and a Fairy Queen’s power was of course particularly formidable at a threshold. But then, eventually, it had stopped lasting, without Jo having reached down to touch Sherlock in return (though she’d kissed her, oh, she had kissed her)and since then there had been no touches or words exchanged on the subject. It was quite possible Sherlock had ruined everything. But since she couldn’t bear to think of that her thoughts would protect her by reeling her back right into the moment itself and she’d think of nothing but the physicality of it, Jo’s lips white with the work of holding in sound and the midnight bells chiming and Sherlock dizzy with the appalling pleasure of it, pleasure she’d guessed and guessed at but had never understood would be quite so much of what it was.

 

The ball had, as could always be expected from Queen Irene, been a masquerade. Sherlock had gone as a shadow creature, abandoning her doublets and breeches and waistcoats and sweeping coats and cloaks for an equally sweeping, clinging, swirling black gown and a mask which she held to her eyes on a stick, decorated with a painted pattern of tiny silvery bones.

 

And Jo…Jo had been taken aside by Irene the day before the ball and been whispered to, and on the day she had come downstairs dressed in what Sherlock knew must be her old woodcutter’s garb, hefting an axe over her shoulder and avoiding Sherlock’s eye. Which was just as well: it certainly would not have done for her to see Sherlock blush, of all things, or how she stared and stared to commit the image to memory.

 

They had danced with other people at first, but each whirl had brought them nearer, and by the time the ordinary band had been replaced with the shadow-hours fairy band, who liked to show off by transforming themselves into lights and gliding over the strings and keys of their instruments to make them produce heartstoppingly lovely music, Sherlock and Jo were dancing together. That would have been enough, really, to have Sherlock lightheaded and self-wounding for days afterwards, but then the chimes began and they were so close and one of them must have been the first to move, and Sherlock didn’t understand how she could possibly not know which.

 

And now, in addition to all that, she had a puzzle. A puzzle phrased with crude simplicity – how could you kill a dragon – but much more complex than it had first appeared.

 

For example, there was the fact that Molly, instead of sending a return raven, had come herself, but only to say regretfully, ‘I do transformation, yeah, but only life and death stuff. The potion I gave you to help you with the Bad Fairy, the ones I give to temporarily restore lips and voiceboxes to the dead when needed so that I can understand it when they speak…never had any need to come up with a frog potion, though. I could try, but…I’ll see if I can find a wizard who can do you one, though.’

 

So Sherlock had gone to Sally’s flat overlooking the river, and Sally had frowned and looked troubled at the mention of the Sea Witch. ‘You really don’t want to get mixed up with Kitty,’ she said. ‘She seems harmless at first, seems like all she wants to do is give you everything you ever wanted, but she never tells you the price upfront, and it’s always more than you think you could ever bear to pay.’

 

‘You seem happy enough as a human,’ Sherlock had said.

 

Sally had shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘most of the time. I get a bit sick of everyone assuming I transformed to meet a prince, and sometimes I miss the sea, but…I’m glad I did it. Things at home were so quiet, I…anyway. You haven’t asked the price I paid.’

 

Sherlock had cast her eyes over Sally, ready to start deducing, but then – and this sort of thing was definitely Jo’s fault – thought better of it. Silly thoughts without proof to back them up came into her head: _this is obviously a sensitive subject, it would be better to let her explain it herself._ There was no evidence for that, but…’What was it?’ Sherlock asked.

 

‘She has a preference for voices,’ Sally said. ‘She often asks for a person’s voice, and then she – tells stories with it, that sound enough like the truth to be believed. I bargained with her, which people never normally do. She was pretty horrified by that but she wanted my voice badly enough to take it on modified terms. I said she could only have it for five years, and she finally agreed. But for those years she controlled how people heard me, how they thought of me…and people know of you, Sherlock, Kitty’d kill to get her hands on your voice. Whatever you want from her, find another way.’

 

So that left Mrs. Hudson, whom Sherlock had been slightly reluctant to involve. For, yes, all right, reasons that had to do with upsetting her, and so on.

 

Sherlock had met Mrs. Hudson when Sherlock was still a pirate – though increasingly a pirate detective – and Mrs. Hudson had landed on her ship and offered her a bucket of wish licences in exchange for working out her husband’s weakness. Everyone had one, but in all their years of marriage and then the years that had followed Mrs. Hudson had never been able to work out his. They had been running a ring of Trio Fairies – fairies who had the power to grant three wishes to the deserving. Mr. Hudson, however, had worked out that they could, in fact, grant more than that, and not just to the deserving, but the wishes would be tainted, dangerous, although even more powerful than the ordinary kind. People desperate enough would buy them.

 

Sherlock had made use of overlimit wishes herself, in the past; she found that the normal kind didn’t give her the same effect of becoming distant from herself and the world, which sometimes she’d needed, when she was younger. But Mr. Hudson’s overlimit wishes were particularly vicious in the unexpected costs they eventually proved to have, and after a while it transpired that he was using the worst of them himself, to kill his rivals. After that, Mrs. Hudson had left, and sought a way to stop him…which Sherlock, in the end, had found, discovering a way to make every last one of the wishes sold find the person who had been responsible, in the first instance, for their being made, and recognising him as the wisher. His days had been numbered, after that.

 

Mrs. Hudson hadn’t granted a wish since, nor performed a spell. Sherlock hadn’t wanted to push her, to bring back thoughts of a time she preferred to forget, but she also wanted to solve the dragon problem, and the selfish desire had won out. Sherlock had been prepared to use every persuasive trick she knew, but Mrs. Hudson had only sighed when asked, and murmured, _Those poor girls. Something has to be done. When you said you wouldn’t take on the task, I understood, but…I’m glad you changed your mind. If there’s something I can do to help, I will._

 

As the conversation went on, they somehow amassed something of a crowd. Jo asked Mary to come, because in the process of defeating Lord Magnussen the Swallower of Secrets it had been revealed that Mary was not, in fact, the orphan child of poor woodcutters, but a Pied Piper. She had been stolen by one as a child and had eventually taken his pipe and become a Piper herself. She was quite done with that now, she said, but she had kept her pipe hidden away, and she would use it one last time if it would help.

 

Then Sally had arrived, saying that she wouldn't talk to the Sea Witch but if she could think of anything useful she'd learned from her she'd share it. And Molly had come back, saying that she'd talked to a couple of dead witches and wizards and they all said the same thing. Unfortunately, what they said wasn't good news: the shape and size and structure of brains and bodies naturally affected how they worked, how they thought. One could not look like a frog and still remain oneself.

 

'As soon as you turn back you become yourself again, though,' Molly said. 'And preserving your clothes and your sword and things isn't a problem. But while you're a frog or whatever it is, you won't remember the plan or why you're there or anything except, you know. Hopping and croaking.'

 

'You'll need backup, then,' Sally said. 'If Jo doesn't come back to herself and remember fast enough...'

 

'We can't risk it,' Jo agreed. 'I think there should be someone else there with a similar disguise.'

 

Sally volunteered immediately. Then Mary said, 'I don't think we can bring anyone else right up to the cave; the dragon may notice if there's too much magic in the air. But my pipe can be heard from quite some distance. I have no idea if it works on dragons, but I'll come and wait nearby in case it does. You should bring cotton wool to stuff your ears with so you’re not affected.'

 

'I'll volunteer as the escort to take you there, Sherlock,' Mrs Hudson said. 'And stay as close as I dare once I've dropped you off. I should be near enough to send a spell if I sense things going wrong.'

 

This wasn't at all how Sherlock had imagined things going. And it wasn't as if she _needed_ help.

 

But...every bit of assistance made it slightly less likely that Jo would be burned up or eaten by a dragon. Or that Sherlock herself would, and so break the promise she'd made.

 

'Thank you,' Jo said, and Sherlock, slowly, nodded.

 

'We meet by the booth on the Forest border at five tomorrow afternoon,' Sherlock said. 'I'll buy the frog potions from the wizard you recommended, Molly, and then I'll go to the heart of the city and make my announcement. Mrs Holland, you should come with me for that to volunteer as my escort.'

 

With things arranged, everyone left, and Sherlock and Jo were alone again, and Sherlock knew, suddenly, from the stillness in the room and the sudden hushing of the breeze outside and the increasingly pointed patterns the sunlight made on the window, that it was time. She would tell the truth, and pay for it. But she was sick to her core of lying to her friend. They had kissed and kissed and the kiss would sit on Sherlock's mouth for ever and surely in a certain quality of moonlight would be visible. Jo would tilt her head to one side and frown at it and not know what she was seeing. She deserved to understand the evidence of her own eyes.

 

'Jo,' Sherlock said, but the name felt wrong, all of a sudden, in her mouth, horrifying when it had never felt anything but perfectly shaped to it. 'Jo,' she said again, losing her way, and then she understood, and breathed low, 'John.'

 

Jo reeled. She stared. ‘Oh,’ she said, and bit her knuckles.

 

‘That’s your true name,’ Sherlock said. ‘Isn’t it?’

 

‘I’d forgotten,’ Jo said, still staring. ‘How could I _forget_?’

 

Sherlock twisted her fingers together and ground her heel distractedly into the carpet. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘I keep feeling it. John – that name doesn’t come – it doesn’t come from here, it comes from… _outside_ , somehow, if I could just –‘

 

‘You guessed my name,’ John said, wonderingly. ‘People say that’s…a true name is the most powerful magic this side of true love. Some people reckon more powerful. People say guessing one breaks curses, breaks stories open…’ She blinked. ‘ _Stories_. That’s important somehow, isn’t it?’

 

‘It was simple to guess, really,’ Sherlock said, trying to remember how to be herself. ‘People’s brains activate when they hear their own names. But you don’t respond quite in the normal way. There’s no spark from you when people say _Jo_. So I realised –‘

 

‘Is that how it happened?’ John said, teasingly, cutting her off. She was suddenly very close. ‘I know you and you know me and no one else knows us like we know each other,’ she said, almost hummed, as if it were a song. So casually, as if she didn’t know it would interfere with Sherlock’s breathing. And Sherlock had set out to tell her as much, hadn’t she? She wasn’t going to let herself back out of it now.

 

John had her hands bunched up in her skirts now, gripping fistfuls of cloth. ‘It’s true,’ she said, half to herself. ‘I was christened Joanna and that’s my real name outside my head. But for most of my life I’ve thought of myself as John. I don’t know why; it just…fits. Feels right. Except that I forgot, and I don’t understand how that could happen…’

 

And then Sherlock looked up at the ceiling and thought of the sky beyond it and imagined what might lie past that and could only envisage a terrible pressing nothing, and she knew, she knew there was something she’d lost, and then, buried and wailing in a corner of her brain, she found it.

 

‘This is a story,’ she said, and as she said it, she felt the conviction become more solid. ‘This is – we’re being tricked, we’re telling ourselves stories, we’re _lost_.’

 

‘How can I be lost when I’m with you?’ John said.

 

Sherlock shook her head frantically. ‘You wouldn’t say that,’ she said, ‘not unless we were in some sort of dire peril. You’re not good at this stuff.’

 

John looked afraid now. ‘Then why –‘

 

‘We’re not ourselves,’ Sherlock said, more and more sure of it. ‘I mean we are but there are moments – can’t you feel it – I couldn’t before but now I’m looking for it, there’s a voice, there’s fingers in the world, it’s not meant to be pushed and pulled around like this.’

 

The pressure of the story was all around her now, bearing down on her. It was more than she’d be able to stand for long. And she hadn’t felt it till now. But till now she’d been going with the grain of it…she pushed back, but she knew she couldn’t keep it up and –

 

‘What do you mean?’ John said, raising a hand to Sherlock’s cheek. ‘Are you…are you all right?’

 

‘Of course,’ Sherlock said. She had a vague idea that she had been saying something important, but…She brushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘I can’t remember what I was…oh, yes, right, of course. On careful reflection I’ve decided that you are entitled to know that I’m in love with you.’

 

John’s reaction was like a blow, even though Sherlock knew something like it was coming. Her face morphed into an expression of utter shock. She hadn’t looked this shocked even when she came upon Sherlock’s body after Sherlock drank Molly’s deathlife potion. Sherlock loving her was, apparently, worse than Sherlock dead.

 

‘I had planned to keep it to myself,’ Sherlock said, perhaps a little defensively. ‘But then there was the ball and I thought…perhaps you wouldn’t have let me do what I did, if you knew. If you thought it was, you know, a stroke-of-midnight lark, something different to try, I can see you might be annoyed to know that it wasn’t. For me. And you keep saying that I lie to you too much, and I used to think that was ridiculous and that you didn’t understand what it was like, in my head, but perhaps it’s not entirely ridiculous. So this is…me not lying. I hadn’t really expected to do this so soon so I haven’t made any preparations, but it’s up to you what – although I do have some ongoing experiments here so I can’t move out straight away, and to be honest I have quite a lot of sensitive apparatus so if one of us is going to move out it should really be –‘ She cut herself off, appalled at how she was babbling. John liked her clever and self-assured and dramatic, posing, knowing exactly what she was doing. But John also liked her to be honest. Somewhere in the electric murk of their interactions there was a line drawn, but Sherlock had never been able to find it, and perhaps it moved, dependent on mood and context.

 

It was tempting to spend the rest of her life being suave and debonair, being the glamorous ex-pirate with the curls tied back just enough to make the way the rest of them tumbled more dramatic, who wore tight gleaming jackets and a dagger at her hip, who knew things no one else knew and didn’t bother with things everyone knew and who could solve any puzzle and who always moved just a little faster than the rest of the world. The way John looked at that person was addictive, and Sherlock had long ago decided that John being breathless and admiring and dazzled was as good as Sherlock was ever likely to get. Never mind if it wasn’t enough, what did that matter when nothing ever would be?

 

But since Sherlock’s time beyond the Forest, John thinking her dead, it hadn’t been enough for John either.

 

‘Thank you for being honest,’ John said, and then her words seemed to get stuck in her head, and she tugged hard at her plait several times and then said, ‘ _Are_ you being honest? Because if this is an experiment or a test or Good knows what it could be but if it is you don’t realise what you’re doing, what the consequences...Please – I won’t be angry if it is, but I will if you don’t tell me now. It’ll unravel everything, if you’re not…’

 

That made Sherlock momentarily angry, even though she knew it was fair. But John evidently didn’t realise how cruel it was to force Sherlock to repeat herself. ‘I meant it,’ she said.

 

‘How _can_ you –‘ John said, and let her hands fall back to her sides. ‘Like you said, I’m not good at this stuff, I…’ Sherlock remembered saying that, but couldn’t think when, or in what context, and that _never_ happened to her, but she barely had a moment to consider it before John was saying, ‘Fuck. Oh, Good. I don’t know what – I don’t know what else to do –‘ and then her arms were holding Sherlock, almost squeezing her, and her mouth was on Sherlock’s face, dragging along her cheek as if reluctantly pulled towards her lips. And they were kissing, as if kissing between them could just happen, as if it were a reasonable consequence of the conversation.

 

John’s dress was crumpled against Sherlock’s body, their arms radiating heat into each other. Sherlock admitted to herself that she didn’t understand what was happening. She was afraid that this was midnight all over again, that it would only make her hurt if she let it carry her away, but the idea of refusing what was offered was incomprehensible. She scrabbled ineffectually at John’s impenetrable skirts and bodice, and John smiled and reached behind herself to unlace her dress, its layers falling away, as if she were brushing off clouds of dust. Sherlock hadn’t seen her last time, had only felt, and now stared with a bewildering, giddy gnawing hunger. Her imagination was expansive and accurate, her visual memory impeccable. Mere glances had enabled her to theorise what John’s body was like, and she had been right. But she hadn’t done as good a job as she’d believed. Though she had taken care to piece together the details of how John would look, taste, smell, sound, feel, though she had neglected nothing, she felt now that there had barely been a passing resemblance. Perhaps there was another sense, unrecorded, perhaps some kind of magic only the fairies understood but which nevertheless affected humans – she didn’t know. She only knew that this was real and that made her sore and longing and utterly swept away.

 

Sherlock was reluctant to undress herself, even though she’d already given everything away and there was nothing more to be found out. But John unbuttoned her jacket and it drove Sherlock half mad thinking of hands on her bare skin and she tried to remove her trousers at the same time and got into a hopeless tangle. John laughed at her between kisses, but not unkindly, and pulled away the rest of the clothing, and then pressed Sherlock down onto the sofa and raised a barely faltering hand to her breasts. ‘Are you really going to let me –‘she said, and Sherlock didn’t know how to answer that, whether to say _no I can’t bear it_ or _whatever it is yes yes please yes anything._ She touched her lips to John’s breasts, one after another, and was overwhelmed all over again by the textures against her dried-out pulled-at bitten smarting mouth. She was hot and aching and surrounded by John Watson and she should have come up with a plan for this eventuality, for how to survive it, but it had never occurred to her that the conversation could end this way. John wasn’t cruel, and she couldn’t, surely, have misunderstood what Sherlock was saying, which only left the possibility that –

 

John’s hands came down Sherlock’s body, and it was like being lifted from a spell; her body felt intensely more like itself with every movement of John’s fingers on it. The bones under her chest felt harder and more solid, her stomach rounder, rising up to meet the touch, the dip of her waist deeper, her thighs softer, the hair between them thicker and fuller, though not so full as the slit it bordered which was trembling with effort, already oversensitised, and John’s hands stroked down it with painful gentleness as if seeking to give relief but only winding the tension higher and then higher still. Sherlock whined and reached for John and found that she was wet too and that her hips were moving slightly, back and forth as though stretching to Sherlock and then pulling themselves away. Then John let out a low, delicious sound, because Sherlock’s finger had reached in shallowly and began to rub tiny circles, just barely pressing in at the top beneath the strained little nub that Sherlock had felt as her fingertip searched for the best place to stroke. They forgot to touch each other anywhere else, though Sherlock had meant to feel every inch of John’s body, had meant to know everything and keep it secure in her head, but she couldn’t bring herself to do anything now except watch the pleasure she could make with this one tiny repetitive movement and whimper as John’s fingers seemed to set up tremors that reached deeper than she thought she could stand.

 

Then John’s breathing grew shallow and gasping and Sherlock’s fingers grew slick with her down to the knuckle. And it was like at midnight and yet nothing like it and Sherlock’s hips began an arrhythmic uncontrolled bucking motion and Jo’s fingers became firmer and surer and within minutes Sherlock was biting down hard on the hand she’d had in John and bucking harder as the taste on her tongue seemed to make it impossible that her body would ever stop pulsing and contracting, that it would ever be still again.

 

But eventually it was still, and with it everything else. Sherlock tried not to dig her hands into John’s shoulders, she really did, but then it became a choice between that and the worse options of stroking John’s hair or reaching back into her to try and make her gasp again.

 

John kissed the edge of her ear where it joined her head. ‘Listen,’ she said, and though Sherlock didn’t want to she had to meet her eyes at that, and saw them blazing. ‘We’re going to get up,’ John said. ‘And maybe we’ll kiss more today, if you want to. And then tomorrow we’ll slay a dragon. And then after that…well, by then maybe I’ll have found the words I need. All right?’

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said. It was all she could say, even though the thought of John’s gathering _words_ was somewhat troubling. Besides, though all she wanted to do was cling to John and wallow in the emotional soup sex had left her in, that wasn’t a good idea. It would be much better to go to her room and find everything that had happened its proper place in the mind palace. Categorise and shelve and label it, arrange the feelings in jars and study them. Then, she was sure, things would start to make sense to her again.


	13. Chapter 13

**i.  
**

 

‘Is the outfit really necessary?’ John said. Sherlock’s hair was down, and she was wearing a floaty white nightdress.

 

‘It helps me get into character,’ Sherlock said primly, while John did her best not to think of conclusively despoiling the pristine fabric. Her best, as it turned out, was not very good. Since the sofa yesterday – really, since the ball – she’d been…distracted. She still didn’t know what she thought about Sherlock’s confession yesterday and everything that had followed; it was too much to take in all at once, but her body clearly had its own opinion.

 

‘Fair enough,’ John said, and couldn’t help grinning at her. Much as the danger Sherlock was putting herself in was tying John’s stomach in knots, she couldn’t help but feel that this was how things were meant to be. The two of them heading off into trouble, attempting ridiculous adventures side by side. She hadn’t felt like this for a while, not properly, things had been off since Sherlock’s return, and it was exhilarating to have it back again. Not that things were _exactly_ as they had been.

 

( _I’m in love with you._ She’d said it matter-of-factly. As if it made sense.)

 

‘Ready?’ Sherlock said, and John nodded.

 

She picked up the potion, but Sherlock said, ‘You don’t want to be holding it when you become yourself again, you’ll want both hands on your sword. Let me.’ So John took her sword up in both hands and stood ready to fight, and then opened her mouth for Sherlock to pour in the potion. They had settled on a mouse in the end as something both small and fast – if she fell out of Sherlock’s pocket she would hopefully be able to catch up. Further investigation had revealed the fact that, while she would be unable to retain her thoughts or memories as a mouse, it was possible for the more expensive potions to help you retain an instinct. John-as-a-mouse wouldn’t know why, but she would be strongly compelled to stay as close to Sherlock as possible (so more or less the same as usual, then).

 

It was strangely intimate having Sherlock’s hands so near her face, feeling the liquid pour over her tongue and slide down her throat. Sherlock was doing it carefully, giving her time to swallow, and it seemed to last a while. John found herself once again searching for words.

 

And then –

                then warmth, fabric, sky, movement, tree smells, roaring, fear, speed –

 

The air smelled of smoke. That was the first thing she became aware of; the second was that she was standing outside a cave, and there was no sign of either the dragon or of Sherlock. Sally was there, though, having apparently successfully transformed back from a vole, and looking just as confused as John felt.

 

They both heard it at the same moment: low voices, coming from inside the cave. They glanced at each other, gripped their swords tighter, and crossed the threshold.

 

It took John a moment to adjust to the darkness, and when she did she saw Sally was already striding forward, familiar, John supposed, with the gloom of the deep sea. John hurried to keep up and gradually, emerging out of the dark, saw the figure of a woman, rushed forward, then stopped abruptly. That wasn’t Sherlock.

 

The woman – girl really – turned, and John saw she had a dagger in her hand. ‘Evening,’ she said. ‘Goodness, a _lot_ of visitors today. Girls!’

 

And then there were a dozen of them, stepping forward and forming a line between where John and Sally stood and wherever the dragon was holding Sherlock. ‘Who are you?’ Sally said.

 

‘What did you think I was doing with all those maidens? Eating them?’ came a strange, lilting voice from the back of the cave. A voice John knew, and that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle instantly. And then a rippling, ivory-coloured scaly mass was emerging behind the line of women, holding a struggling Sherlock in its claws. ‘People taste disgusting,’ the dragon continued. ‘And anyway, what a waste. No.’ Her voice became singsong: ‘Meet the Moran Battalion.’

 

‘The – ah,’ Sally said. ‘After King Sebastian.’

 

‘Indeed,’ the dragon said, the dragon whose voice was the same as…’The ruler in place when I first arrived in this cave, deposed last year by the Fairy Queen Irene. It was he who agreed to my tribute, so the girls named themselves in tribute to him.’

 

‘So you – you brainwashed them,’ John said. The sandy-haired girl who John had seen first tittered, as did several of the others.

 

‘Not at all,’ the dragon said. ‘I asked for maidens as they were likely to have fewer ties. Some of them, of course, refused to give up their families, and those were killed, but others leapt at the chance for some excitement, and those I made into an army.’

 

She leaned forward, and her enormous silver eyes surveyed John. ‘Joanna Watson,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you again.’

 

‘You know me,’ John said, and even as she said it she knew the voice was no coincidence. ‘You’re – but you _can’t_ – you burned up. I saw you burn.’

 

‘You really must do something about this habit of believing everything you see,’ the dragon – the Bad Fairy – _Moriarty –_ said. ‘Isn’t that right, Sherlock?’

 

Sherlock was still struggling pointlessly, and ignored the question. John looked helplessly at Sally, but Sally looked like she had no more idea of what to do than John did. Their potions had kicked in too late and they’d missed their chance to stab the dragon while it was vulnerable; now they had not only a dragon who was fully aware of their presence to contend with, but twelve guardians who John was pretty sure the dragon had trained to fight. They were hopelessly outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and without a chance.

 

Still, John thought. They could go down fighting. And Sally seemed to see the resolution settle on John’s face, and gave a small nod. They both moved at once.

 

John’s brain split, a feeling she remembered from fighting Forest ogres as a woodcutter. One part heard the sound of eleven daggers being drawn, another glimpsed Sally knocking the nearest Moran to the ground with the flat of her blade, another saw Sherlock go limp in Moriarty’s claws, and the rest was all in her body, in the raising of her arm and the swinging of her sword. Everything became fast and sharp and her body was screaming but so far only with exertion and near misses that stung blood from her skin but not yet from her organs.

 

She glimpsed things happening around her. Sally fighting well, better than John because John’s gaze kept slipping to Sherlock’s draped unmoving body. But then she saw Moriarty letting her guard down, and Sherlock following through on what had clearly been a ploy, slipping out of her grip and running up behind one of the Morans to push her into John’s blade. It felt wrong, killing these girls, who were so young and had only been bored and lost like John had. But John had found her own way; she would never have helped someone like Moriarty. _And after that?_ she thought. _What if I hadn’t met Sherlock?_ But thoughts like that were useless at a time like this, they were all very well in moments of quiet reflection but now she had to slice and sweep and remember that what she was doing had to be done and that these women had stood by while Moriarty killed the girls who refused to join them, or struck the blow themselves. That they would have killed Sherlock.

 

Slowly, though, the tide began to turn against her and Sally. Moriarty had caught up with Sherlock, trapping her beneath an enormous scaled foot; Sally was trying to fight two Morans at once, and John was backed into a corner, her shoulder beginning to fail her. She’d given up hefting an axe for a reason, and a sword was no better. One stab straight up, as they’d planned, would have been fine, but this was taking its toll. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

 

And then in the distance she heard faint notes, the loveliest thing she had ever heard in her life. She dropped her sword and shut her eyes to listen.

 

There was a horrible yelling noise interfering with the music, but she ignored it. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to go to sleep, and then she would hear the music in her dreams.

 

Sally was approaching, and John smiled at her, wondering why she wasn’t smiling. How could you not smile at a sound like –

 

The sound cut out abruptly as Sally grabbed John’s head and unceremoniously shoved cotton wool into her ears.

 

Ah. John mouthed her thanks, then looked around. The Morans were slumped on the ground, blissed out expressions on their faces, their eyes slowly closing. _Thank you, Mary_ , John thought. They were not, however, out of trouble. Mary’s guess that her pipe wouldn’t work on the dragon was clearly correct. Moriarty was as awake as ever, and did not look happy about what had happened to her army. She had been staying out of the fight, content to let her minions take care of the intruders, but now she roared, and stepped forward.

 

‘I promised I’d burn you, Sherlock,’ she said. ‘And over the years you’ve made the best way of doing that profoundly obvious.’ She opened her mouth, her eyes fixed on John, and John saw the fire at the back of her throat, and knew she wouldn’t be able to throw herself out of the way fast enough.

 

The air shimmered. Moriarty roared, and a column of flame poured from her mouth and straight into –

 

– into the silver mirror that had appeared in front of John, one corner held by Mrs. Hudson and the other by – by _Queen Irene?_ The flame entered the mirror and then emerged the way it had come in, now silver in colour, and surged towards Moriarty. Moriarty tried to move, but the flame ran over her body like some viscous liquid and coated her, sticking to her scales. She howled, and then tiny blue flames sprung up all over her body. Within minutes there was nothing where she had stood but a large pile of white ash and Sherlock, unharmed but looking shocked.

 

‘Did we –‘ Sally started, but then the cave began shaking, and John would have run from the roof that was surely about to cave in but she knew there was no way they would all get out in time and so instead she ran towards Sherlock to shield her body with John’s own. But the roof didn’t cave in. Instead, it vanished, and John looked up to the sky and thought how thin it seemed, as if there was something beyond –

 

‘The story’s falling apart with the storyteller dead,’ Sherlock said. ‘We should remember everything in a moment.’ She picked herself up off the floor

 

which was shifting, changing, and Sherlock was taking John’s hand and they were running across it away from the others, out of the cave, deep into the Forest. ‘We’re free of it,’ Sherlock was saying, ‘or we will be, I’m sure of it. I don’t quite know how it works but I suspect there may be some…instability as the world realigns itself.’

 

John nodded, pushing her fingers through her short slicked back hair, then sticking her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. ‘Instability,’ she said, ‘Got it.’ They’d stopped running now, and were sitting on the roof of John’s spaceship, parked in mid-air, gazing out over London.

 

‘I’m not quite sure what it’ll feel like,’ Sherlock said. ‘We may not even know it’s happening.’

 

John lay back on the roof of the carriage, and pulled Sherlock close to her. ‘I found the words,’ she said. ‘When I thought we were going to…it turns out they weren’t very complicated. And you, of course, were ten steps ahead. You’d already figured it out. Until you said it, I thought I needed better words, thought you’d think _I’m in love with you_ trite or inexact or something. But when you said that it worked just fine, as far as I’m concerned, so. That’s that, really.’

 

‘I don’t understand,’ Sherlock said, wrapping two of her tentacles around herself protectively. ‘Look, John, you don’t have to say anything –‘

 

‘I am in love with you, is what I have to say,’ John said, looking fixedly out at the horizon and the six turquoise moons in the sky. ‘I’m attracted to you and I loved fucking you and I love you and I want to live with you and kiss you and shag you and complain about your experiments for the rest of my life and if you have any interest in kissing me right now then by Zurdigon’s horns please do it so I don’t have to go on saying this stuff because honestly I don’t think I’m going to stop of my own accord and I think we both find this embarrassing so –‘

 

When Sherlock eventually drew back, John said, weakly, ‘Thank you.’

 

‘I would have been perfectly happy for you to continue,’ Sherlock said, breathlessly. ‘It was very interesting.’

 

There was a pause, which contained some more kissing, then John looked down at her body, and said, ‘This is going to sound…really stupid, but – these tentacles. Did we have them five minutes ago?’

 

The world shuddered –


	14. Chapter 14

‘Instability,’ Sherlock whispered. ‘It’s coming apart –‘ The sky was too big and too thin and she knew there was nothing outside of what could be perceived. ‘I don’t know if there’ll be anything left when it’s over.’

 

‘Then we should –‘ John said, and her mouth was on Sherlock again and it was true, she was right, there could be no better way to spend the possible end of the world. John’s hands ran down the tight leather of Sherlock’s catsuit, the pressure of it maddening: the material was too robust, the press of John’s hands elusive through it. Sherlock reached for John’s bowtie and when it was off pushed her mouth to John’s neck, while her hands reached for the buttons of John’s dinner jacket. She mouthed over the suprasternal notch, the skin covering the sternocleidomastoid muscle. John’s hands found their way to the zip of the catsuit and began to undo Sherlock’s corset, Sherlock unravelling with the laces as she gently lifted John’s flight goggles and kissed each of her closed eyes, lashes tickling her mouth.

 

London was heaving with heat below them, but in the dirigible it was somehow cool, the air circulating constantly. Some sort of mechanical system to control the temperature…and John laughed to see Sherlock looking around her in fascination, and blew cool air over the back of her neck, making Sherlock shiver, then put her hot mouth to it, with a similar result. Sherlock, suddenly desperate, tugged frantically at John’s greatcoat and threw it to the floor, though the goggles she deposited carefully by the lever panel. That was the last careful movement she could bring herself to make, though: she tore John’s waistcoat in her haste to get it off and John flung Sherlock’s corset so hard it shot across the floor of the room and then they buried themselves in each other. Sherlock raked her needle-like claws very gently across John’s flesh and John made a quavering noise


	15. Chapter 15

and gripped Sherlock’s hand and pushed so that the claws moved a little deeper, just enough to draw blood, and the sight of the blood made John whimper. She bit down on Sherlock’s shoulder and tasted the strange metallic blood-like sharpness of her skin, and then the stranger honeyed viscosity of the blood beneath it. Sherlock’s tail was coiled around John and if she wanted she could drag John underwater to her death but there was salt in John’s hair and damp soaking into her naked body from the rock and smooth scales against her hip and their blood mingling and dripping into the sea and John had no thought of escape.

 

The scales on Sherlock’s tail were changing colour, the fins at the end retracting, and the tail tracing towards where John was open and wanting. John moaned to see it and then laughed out loud as the broomstick somersaulted, Sherlock’s arms tight around her back. She landed high on a mountain and stepped off the broomstick, her dress whipping around her in the high wind, and waved her hand to make silk blankets appear on the floor. Sherlock grinned appreciatively at that and stripped away her velvets and satins, already ripped half to shreds, and tugged John down onto the surface. When John made her dress vanish, the silk became decadent on her skin, almost as much so as the feel of Sherlock against her. Sherlock slipped only her little finger inside John, the pressure of it barely there and utterly maddening, and John squirmed in the heat of the spaceship, the metal floor hard against her head. Sherlock was flushed, wearing John’s leather jacket and nothing else, and John sucked marks onto her neck and chest and mouthed at her breasts while Sherlock’s finger continued its unbearably delicate exploration of John’s cunt.

 

‘I thought about this,’ John said, the words quiet under the hum of the spaceship’s workings. ‘You torturing me just like this. Never for more than a second, I’d push it away, but –‘ Sherlock’s finger picked up speed, fast now but just as light and shallow, and John twisted frantically, her body desperate but with no idea what to do to get more pressure. She ripped Sherlock’s catsuit open then, tore it right down the front, and Sherlock made an affirming noise and spread her legs in shameless, needy invitation. ‘Did you think about this?’ John asked, pressing her mouth to Sherlock’s cunt and finding it as strange as she’d thought she might but also as necessary, as compelling.

 

‘I thought about it all the – fucking time,’ Sherlock said, gripping the marble statue in their alcove for support. In the room below the party was still in full swing, their target drinking champagne and utterly unaware that a spy sent by MI6 to investigate his plans for an underground ‘office space’ and an assassin sent by a rival to kill him were fucking in an alcove off his gilded balcony. John would never have thought of herself as an exhibitionist but the clinking glasses and murmuring below contrasted with the cramped heat of their hollow were doing something for her, or perhaps it was all Sherlock, Sherlock now writhing beneath John’s curious tongue and saying, ‘But I thought about doing this to you, I couldn’t think of you doing it to me, it was – it broke suspension of disbelief, I never thought – and it was too much to think of, oh God oh fuck –‘ John swiped her tongue across Sherlock’s clit, then traced around it, and Sherlock’s eyes screwed shut. ‘I could spend an hour touching myself and thinking of having my tongue in you and not get bored, that was – ugnh – a revelation –‘

 

‘I want to watch you do that sometime,’ John said, pulling the tentacle out of Sherlock with a sucking sound. A few hairs came away with it, and it had to sting but that didn’t seem to be putting Sherlock off in the least, and John kept her eyes on her as she ran the tentacle over her own lips and then into her mouth. ‘Watch you touch yourself and think about me like that.’ Sherlock groaned, and groaned more when John pushed two more tentacles into her, then grew smaller tentacles from them that probed in a way that would have been clinical if either of them could believe John capable of detachment in this. Sherlock’s head was tipped right back, the ends of her hair grazing the surface of the electric pool and sparking into static. They were out in the wastes of the planet, surrounded by danger, and Sherlock was human and wouldn’t survive a fall into five thousand volts of electrified water. John pulled her close with her tentacles and for a moment was gentle, but


	16. Chapter 16

gentleness was not what Sherlock wanted, she couldn’t stand it, and she got her own back by taking one of John’s tentacles and holding it tenderly to her mouth and running her tongue along it, slow and delicate, flicking at the tip. John whined, her neck suckers pulsing unhappily, and took the hint, making the motion of her fingers slower but harder, sliding deep in and out of Sherlock while waving her other hand for a spell to make the air around her fingers vibrate, and Sherlock keened in shock and came, shaking. John slowed further and made the vibrations very gentle but didn’t stop, and Sherlock couldn’t stop talking, telling John everything, _I lay in my room and unlaced my corset slowly and pretended you were teasing me, I fucked myself with my fingers and thought of you pinning me down and making me beg for it, I thought of you slicing my robes with your sword, I thought of barging into your airship and showing you an array of mechanical toys I’d invented and asking to test them on you. I thought of pretending I needed you to kiss me for a case, I thought of raiding your ship and taking you hostage and you slowly turning the tables on me, I thought of us rubbing our bodies together as hard and fast as we could bear for as long as I could stand it, for longer._

But it was all right, John didn’t seem to mind, quite the reverse, she was wet and whimpering and dazed, gazing at Sherlock like Sherlock was – oh – was every adjective Sherlock had ever taken from her and treasured times a thousand –

 

And she had her hand between her legs, like Sherlock coming had made it impossible for her not to touch herself, like she was as desperate for Sherlock as Sherlock was for her. And Sherlock meant to move, to touch her instead, but couldn’t stop staring long enough to coordinate herself and wound up with her fingers in John’s hair pulling at it as John came. Then John pressed their sweating bodies together and they were as close as Sherlock could ever have imagined, John absently dropping kisses into her hair as if kissing Sherlock was her default state now. They were lying under the carriage, rain pouring outside, their unicorn’s hooves just visible, stomping irritably. There was mud creeping into the soaked fabric of their torn dresses, and John’s hands found their way underneath the fabric back to Sherlock’s clit and began a rhythm again, almost painful to her desperately sensitive flesh and Sherlock wouldn’t have stopped it for anything. Then John lifted her own clinging underskirt and pressed her cunt, the hair damp and clinging now, to Sherlock’s leg, and set up rubbing, tentative at first and then surer as she found the right place to press. Sherlock bent her knee slightly to press up harder into her and then they were both whining and gasping again, pushed beyond their limits and desperate to go further. They came together this time, and then clung to each other, listening to the rain and to each other’s slowing breaths.

 

They were in the Forest, not far from the dragon’s cave. If Sherlock looked to her left, John would be looking back at her. But she should adjust her face first, she should gather some clever things to say, she should –

 

She turned her head.

 

Jo was entirely naked, as naked as a leaf, a flame, as words said aloud. Well, of course she was: hadn’t Sherlock stripped her through world after world until everything fell away? Hadn’t she worked at it, sweated and gasped her way through layer after changing layer? Even so, to look at her like this made Sherlock feel like she was breathing microscopic fragments of shattered glass, like there were edges glittering in her chest.

 

John raised her head, and smiled down at Sherlock. ‘That was extraordinary,’ she said. ‘And we won, Sherlock, we did it. We killed the dragon.’

 

A cold fear pricked down Sherlock’s spine. ‘Did we?’ she said. She looked around her. ‘This isn’t right, the story should have fallen apart. We should be dead or back in reality by now, one of the two. I thought we’d won too, but…’

 

‘Of course we did,’ John said, stroking Sherlock’s hair and then turning to search the ground for her clothes. She repeated herself: ‘We killed the dragon.’

 

Sherlock’s head hurt. She pressed her hands to her temples, and then smiled as the triumph began to set in. John was right. They had won. ‘We should go back to London,’ she said. ‘The others will be wondering where we are. And then we can celebrate.’

 

John grinned at her. ‘I have some ideas about how,’ she said.


	17. Chapter 17

**i.**

 

Back at Baker Street, the mood was jubilant. Molly brought a bottle of enchanted nectar and they got giddy on it, toasting each other and their success in defeating Moriarty. Sherlock wasn’t normally a fan of parties, but she seemed to be enjoying this one, perhaps because it was celebrating the success of her plan (even though nothing had gone according to plan, but never mind) or perhaps because John had put her in a good mood. That last thought made John smile.

 

Certain members of the party – Queen Irene, Mrs. Hudson, and Mary – were watching them closely, and occasionally smirking. John wondered if they’d been loud, lying out there in the Forest, or whether it was something in how they were looking at each other.

 

The only worry was that the surviving Morans had escaped somehow; there had been a period of confusion after Moriarty’s death which none of them remembered very well and which Irene and Mrs. Hudson said was probably due to the enormous magical discharge caused by such a powerful magical creature dying. At some point during that time, the Moran Battalion had scattered. Still, they could be tracked down and made to answer for their crimes; John had every faith in Sally and Geri to find them. And in Sherlock, though John planned to distract Sherlock rather a lot over the coming days.

 

Just as she was thinking this, Sally said, ‘I can’t stay long. I need to meet Lestrade at the Hill of Sight to discuss going after the Morans.’

 

‘You only need to find one, really,’ Sherlock commented. ‘If you do that you should be able to make her tell you where the others are hiding. They’re close, they’ll have stuck together as much as possible.’

 

Something in how Sherlock said _make her_ made John momentarily uneasy, but she shrugged it off. The night wore on, and as stars began to show bright in the sky John gathered Sherlock to her, and kissed her, and the others giggled and _ooh_ ed at them.

 

John had never thought she’d have True Love or a Happy Ending, never thought she needed or especially wanted either. But this was wonderful. _I shouldn’t have risked losing Sherlock, though_ , she thought. _I should have killed that Moran girl as soon as I saw her, not waited for her to speak, to do us harm._ Then she frowned, and rubbed at her head; of course she hadn’t stabbed the girl without finding out who she was and what she was doing there. The nectar must be getting to her.

 

After their guests left, John took Sherlock by the hand and led her to bed, and Sherlock laughed at her romanticism but didn’t protest.

 

At six the morning chorus started as always, bringing news from all over the kingdom. There were the people who’d offended witches or fairies or broken conditions set by wise women and been bewitched into birds, who’d found a new career calling out brief news summaries and bits of gossip each morning; a bird at one end of the Kingdom might start singing and others would mimic it, spreading the news across London. There were the bees, who transmitted the news they considered important to each other; no one knew how, or what determined importance for them, and few could understand them (although Sherlock was able to interpret some of it, and always said that she wanted to study the phenomenon one day). And there was the Sea Story, the pattern of currents directed by the Sea Witch that carried pieces of information from all around the Kingdom and brought them together as coherent narratives, flowing into rivers and streams, garden ponds and kitchen taps.

 

Today, though, John and Sherlock paid the chorus no attention. Their attention was fixed on each other, and on the task of tracking down the Morans. ‘They’re likely to be in the Forest somewhere,’ Sherlock said, ‘but it’s just possible they could be hiding somewhere in the Kingdom. There are plenty of lost and shadowed places here too, even if people don’t like to admit it.’ She began to pace. ‘The Morans are evil, so it may be that birds will caw over where they hide, or water nearby will dry up, or the light will refuse to shine there. We can’t rely on that, though; they could have ways to counteract that kind of thing. However, I’ve studied concealment magic; in fact I’ve actually published a web log on the different kinds.’

 

John grinned into her palm. London was full of enchanted spiders these days, spinning words into their large, glittering, prominently displayed webs in exchange for gifts of flies, and practically everyone had a group of them living on their window and web logging for them. John’s web log, to Sherlock’s poorly hidden chagrin, was a lot more popular than Sherlock’s, despite being ‘so inaccurate, Jo, utterly romanticised and careless with the most important elements of our cases’. People gathered every day to read it, or sent their spiders to read it and then come to re-weave it in their own houses.

 

Sherlock said that many spells drew on the earth and would have left traces there, so they spent a dull morning collecting soil samples from around the dragon’s cave. The Border Keeper wasn’t at her booth, which was strange, but Sherlock said she hadn’t been there when they went to slay the dragon either, and thinking about it John supposed she hadn’t been there on their way out afterwards, only John had been too distracted to notice. ‘Mycroft must have her off on some task,’ Sherlock said.

 

When they returned, they got as far as the booth, and then froze.

 

There was one safe path from the Kingdom to the Forest; everyone knew this. Step off it and you could be taken, and no law could prevent it.

 

Now there were a thousand paths, all identical.

 

‘Fairies?’ John asked, and Sherlock folded her arms and frowned, and didn’t answer. She reached for her magnifier, and a hundred magnifiers tumbled from her pocket, all the same. John and Sherlock looked at each other.

 

Then they looked back, and there was only one path again. Sherlock hesitated, then stepped forward. John hurriedly pushed in front of her and stepped onto the path first. ‘Seems safe,’ she said, doubtfully. Sherlock followed her, then strode ahead, and they reached London without further incident.

 

In London itself, though, things became strange. A group of small lizards with tiny glittering wings hissed at Sherlock from a wall in a courtyard, and then turned away from her, and it seemed to John that people were glaring at them. When John suggested this Sherlock said, irritably, ‘What do they matter?’ and walked faster so that John almost had to run to keep up.

 

That was the first day after the dragon died.

 

On the second day, they couldn’t go out for several hours after sunrise because there were only two blossoms on the tree outside. When eventually the third blossom appeared and they were able to leave the flat, Sherlock was fretting over all the time they’d lost and how the Morans could be in another kingdom by now.

 

‘You’re brilliant,’ John said, ‘you’ll find them.’

 

‘Stop _twittering_ at me,’ Sherlock snapped, ‘I’m trying to think.’

 

Things looked up after that though. They took a break from hunting the Moran Battalion to solve a case for Lestrade, successfully catching a man who was drowning people in a wishing well in order to fish out for himself all the wishes that they would have made in their lives.

 

On their way home, a woman in the street stopped them and said, ‘The Sea Story’s claiming you killed the dragon. Is it true?’

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said.

 

‘You should be ashamed,’ the woman said, shaking her head. ‘A rare creature like that…’ And people were looking their way and nodding, and John began to understand.

 

‘Who was kidnapping and murdering people and burning farms,’ Sherlock said, frowning at the woman. ‘Forgive me if I don’t shed too many tears.’

 

‘It’s true what they say, then,’ the woman said, apparently appalled. ‘You’re heartless.’

 

Then Sherlock let stream a furious, brilliant, vindictive string of deductions, crueller than anything John had ever heard from her before. By the end the woman was crying, and John was staring at Sherlock with a creeping, bewildered kind of shock.

 

On the third day, no one would even look at them. When they passed trees, thorn-laden branches grew from them to prick at Sherlock’s skin and bury themselves in her flesh. Birdsong vanished from the air as soon as they drew near its source. They went home, Sherlock stood over an experiment, paring roots, and the knife turned in her hand and cut into her palm.

 

‘What’s happening?’ John asked, afraid, and Sherlock snapped, ‘I don’t have time for your idiotic questions right now, John, if you could save your bumbling for – never, actually, never, just get out of my sight –‘

 

John left, walked aimlessly, and soon ravens began to follow her, croaking _COME BACK JOHN, I’M SORRY, I LOVE YOU_. When the cawing riot reached a level she couldn’t bear – for they kept arriving, and none of them would leave her – she gave up and walked home, ready to forgive, and Sherlock had made her tea. She drank it, recognised too late that it was far sweeter than it should be, and felt herself fall into enchantment.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Sherlock said. ‘I think the Morans might be hiding themselves from fairy search spells by keeping themselves in a bewitched state, and I needed to test it on someone.’

 

‘You promised you wouldn’t do this again,’ John said. ‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’ It was the last thing she remembered saying before her eyes shuttered hard and fog settled in her head behind them. It burned in her head for hours, and she had no way to get away from it. Through it all she was dimly aware of Sherlock’s voice, muttering observations to herself: _twitching, sounds of pain, they’re unlikely to have tried it for long…_

 

By the fourth day, John was terrified, and Sherlock was swinging between cool, detached arrogance and a terror even greater than John’s.

 

‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ she’d say, burying her head in John’s shoulder. ‘There’s things in my head, I feel as though I’m being – shaped.’ Then suddenly she’d brush John off, grimace as though the contact was distasteful, and stride away.

 

At noon, a shadow passed over their window, and then there was a sharp, frantic rapping on their door. John hurried to open it, and there stood the Border Keeper, Mycroft’s strangely elusive second in command who watched over the border between the Kingdom and the Forest, and ran Mycroft’s errands.

 

‘I’m busy,’ Sherlock said. John was frowning: the Border Keeper normally looked shiny and poised, but her hair was a maze of knots and her eyes were deep with exhaustion.

 

‘This can’t wait,’ the Border Keeper said. ‘You don’t know what it took for us to get here. The story’s been fighting us every step of the way.’ And she grabbed Sherlock’s head and twisted it, so that it was facing towards the door. John looked out, and saw the enormous blackbird there, as big as a person, looking into Sherlock’s eyes. A moment later, it began to shapeshift.

 

Sherlock wrenched herself out of the Border Keeper's grip and stepped back into the room. 'Fine,' she said. 'What's so important?'

 

**ii.**

 

When Mycroft was nine and Sherlock two, their parents had turned them out of the house and sent them into the Forest. Mycroft could no longer remember why, if they had ever said. But she had taken Sherlock in her arms and carried her through the pools of ghostly light that filtered past the trees, through the wolf thickets and ogre swamps, until, both of them desperately hungry, they had come upon a gingerbread cottage and been able to resist nibbling at it. For that they had nearly paid with their lives, till Mycroft had outwitted the witch who lived in the house, killed her and taken her powers. After that, she and Sherlock made their home in the cottage.

 

When Mycroft was thirteen and Sherlock six, Sherlock had snuck out of the cottage in the dead of night and wandered off to explore the Forest. Mycroft had called on every drop of power she possessed to try the most challenging spell she had yet attempted, and turned herself into a blackbird to fly through the Forest in search of her sister. Eventually she found Sherlock in a meadow of flowers, patiently explaining to a wolf which kinds had the most poisonous pollen and beaming when the wolf said how clever she was. Mycroft resumed her proper form, picked up Sherlock, and carried her home, where Sherlock immediately entered into a sulk of grand proportions.

 

When Mycroft was nineteen and Sherlock twelve, Mycroft made a bargain with the birds from the tallest trees, who watched over the Forest.

 

 _I’ll take your burden for you_ , she said, _if you give me greater power to watch over my sister. I keep failing. Sooner or later…_

And so she was cursed, or at least she knew that was how other people saw it. As far as she was concerned the fact that her wings were now enormous and could take her wherever she wanted to go, the fact that she could now hold only conversations which she truly needed to hold, the way she could see everything that was happening in the Forest at once – all this was far from a curse. But since casual conversation was difficult and she was not in any case inclined to it by nature, she told no one this. They pitied her for a while, and then eventually they admired her as an oddity, and finally they came to respect and fear her. Sherlock, Mycroft thought, would profit from that respect, would have many options open to her. She might go to the fairies and be welcomed into their secretive ranks, she might become a basket carrier, taking provisions to those who needed them, outwitting wolves along the way. There were many possibilities for a life in the Forest, so Mycroft thought, that would keep her sister’s quick, fragile, flickering brain occupied and interested.

 

When Mycroft was twenty three and Sherlock sixteen, Sherlock went to stay with the Alchemist, who lived in a creaking wooden tower by a pearly lake full of wish-granting golden jellyfish, and came back after her months there starry-eyed and strangely focused, mixing bottles in her room. _This is the trade for her_ , Mycroft thought. _She’s settling down._

When Mycroft was twenty four and Sherlock was seventeen, Sherlock ran away to sea.

 

Mycroft’s powers did not extend beyond the Forest. She relied on scouts to tell her how Sherlock was faring, and had no way of influencing the situation. Mycroft flew out to find and visit her as often as she could, Sherlock scowling at her and telling her she didn’t understand, to mind her own business.

 

Sherlock spent ten years as a pirate before she grew tired of it, and came back to land. But not home. Sherlock chose the Kingdom over the Forest, and made her home in London. But at least she was fixed in one place now. And as of a few years ago there was Joanna, who could have been the making of Sherlock or made her worse than ever. Years later, Mycroft still didn’t know which it had turned out to be.

 

Mycroft remembered all that. She remembered the fear and determination she’d felt when she’d been turned away by her parents, remembered the colour of the flowers clenched in Sherlock’s tiny hand as she spoke to the wolf. She also knew that none of it had really happened.

 

‘I knew it,’ Sherlock said. ‘I knew there was something wrong.’

 

Joanna looked considerably more shocked. ‘Not _real_?’ she said. ‘The dragon, and…’

 

‘Nothing,’ Mycroft stressed. ‘Nothing you see or feel or know here is real. We are, all of us, trapped in a story of Jem Moriarty’s devising.’

 

‘But we killed Moriarty,’ Joanna said.

 

‘So she would like you to believe,’ Mycroft said. ‘But the storyteller cannot be driven out of her own story so easily. She’s still here, and still very much in control.’

 

‘But how do we stop her?’ Sherlock said – not to Mycroft, that would be far too much like asking for help, but to herself – ‘How can we stop her if killing the forms she takes here isn’t enough? We can’t reach her any other way.’

 

‘In the real world,’ Mycroft said, ‘I had been studying this storytelling phenomenon. A secret government department has been researching it almost since it began. I believe the secret to escaping this trap lies in what we found out.’

 

‘And that was?’ Sherlock said.

 

‘The stories told by those who have the power – that is, you, Joanna, Mary Morstan, Irene Adler, Sally Donovan, Martha Hudson and Jem Moriarty – offer glimpses into alternate universes, things as they might have been. They blur the boundaries between what is and what could be. Our research indicates that the reason this has become possible has its source in one particular universe.’

 

Mycroft didn’t much like walking – preferred flying, that she would miss if they got out of this – but felt the need to stride rather fast to the armchair before sitting down. When she was younger she would have had to pace the room while saying something like this, but she had learned stillness with age, unlike Sherlock. ‘People, of course, make up ordinary stories, without powers being involved, all the time. And since anything can happen anywhere, those stories often tell of things that really happened in alternate worlds. This, we have discovered, has an effect on those worlds, rocks the fabric of them a little, but the effect is miniscule.’

 

Sherlock shifted in her chair. Mycroft went on, ‘In the universe we found, people were telling stories about people very much like us, with a few key differences. Books, at first, and then more than that. Films, television, word of mouth, stories exchanged for money and for free, by phone cable and electricity and any way people could think of. And each of those rocked our universe, pushed at it, until eventually its momentum picked up and holes began to appear in its framework. Alternate possibilities began to get through, and attached themselves to people connected to the story. Connected, that is to say, to Sherlock, around whom the story centred, although not to Sherlock herself. We think the intensity of her connection burned the possibilities up when they tried to take root in her, although that’s only a theory as of yet. But certain people around her gained the ability to manipulate their reality through fiction.’

 

‘Including _me?_ ‘ Joanna said. ‘But I don’t…’

 

‘Your powers work in different ways, as they are shaped by who you are,’ Mycroft said. ‘Only Adler can create a story within someone else’s, which is why you can’t use your powers in this world, and only Donovan has complete control over the scope of her story, and only Moriarty can make people believe that her stories are real. Something she’s now using to her advantage to finally defeat you, Sherlock. She’s reusing a scheme that she already tried in the real world and which failed, but which is far more effective here.’

 

‘How?’ Joanna said. Sherlock was silent, absorbing the information.

 

‘You’ve noted, though you won’t remember it, that your stories are powerful primarily because they regard you as their hero and ensure your victory,’ Mycroft said. ‘And Moriarty knew you, Joanna; she knew that as soon as you’d admitted the secret of your powers to Sherlock your stories would be as likely to feature her as the hero as you. More likely, in fact; telling stories in which Sherlock is the hero is something you’re rather fond of. So Moriarty created a world in which Sherlock really was a hero, famous and successful and essentially good, and then turned it on its head.’ She looks at Sherlock. ‘ You’re transforming into a villain. Moriarty’s been practicing this, inserting thoughts into people’s heads that they would never normally have, and now she’s doing it on a grander scale to you. Stories are matters of perception, and if everyone perceives you as the villain then sooner or later that’s what you’ll be. Before long you will lose yourself entirely. And in fairyland, villains are always defeated.’


	18. Chapter 18

**i.**

‘I knew something was wrong,’ Sally said.

 

Sherlock scoffed. ‘No, you didn’t.’

 

Sally rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not trying to say I magically guessed what was going on. I just know that things have felt…weird, recently. And I don’t think it was just me.’

 

There was murmuring and nodding at that. Sherlock folded her arms.

 

Molly hesitated, aware that in Sherlock’s current mood she’d savage Molly for saying something so obvious, but someone needed to say it, so: ‘What are we going to do?’

 

‘What an insightful question,’ Sherlock muttered, but really, it could have been a lot worse.

 

And Molly tried to think, but kept coming up against what Sherlock’s revelation meant. Because all she could think of was what she knew. She was a Necromancer – which did not mean that she brought the dead back to life or controlled them, only that she knew how to hold conversations with them; useful for police investigations. And all the ideas that came to her concerned asking the dead for advice, or making a potion, or speaking to the fairies about a spell.

 

But none of that was real.

 

Sally voiced what Molly was thinking: ‘How can we come up with a plan when we don’t even know who we are?’ she said. ‘How can we formulate _anything_ when everything we say can be shaped by the person we’re trying to stop?’

 

**ii.**

‘It stands to reason that she’s not controlling everything we do,’ Sherlock reasoned aloud. ‘No one would be capable of that, no matter how extraordinary their mind. To control every single thought and action of even one person, never mind more than that…no, it couldn’t be done. So it’s just the occasional nudge, the odd thought slipped into our brains…’

 

Mary shuddered. She thought of the Piper – who had never existed, but never mind that, she remembered the first time she’d heard his music, the awful tug as her body insisted on falling into step with it, to lift one foot and then the other, to walk in time away into the hills. He’d trained the children he took as small, light-footed assassins and hired them out to the cursed and vengeful. Until Mary had returned the skills he taught her to him, in a form he perhaps didn’t appreciate.

 

And then she had been alone, in the shadows of the city, knowing as few knew that the Kingdom had as many dark places and as much viciousness as the Forest, and taking full advantage of that.

 

She wasn’t alone now. She made jokes, laughed at the jokes other people made, exchanged affection with them. The thought of it being taken from her – the thought that none of this had ever happened –

 

She was heartsore, and confused, and angry. It was alarming – if maybe a little exhilarating – to be so out of control. ‘And supposedly we have powers too?’ she said. ‘If we could learn how to use them here…’

 

**iii.**

‘Of course we can use them here,’ Irene said impatiently, folding her wings behind her head and leaning back on them.

 

Janine frowned. ‘But Jo said Mycroft said only you could do stories within stories.’

 

‘Apparently that is generally the case, yes,’ Irene said. ‘But consider. Mycroft, we are told, also said that these stories we tell, that change the world around them, come in particular shapes and sizes, with particular conventions. If we’re to break out of this one, we need to understand how it works, what it’s made of. And you know what strikes me?’

 

‘What?’ Molly said.

 

‘Whatever sort of story we’re in, layering’s an integral part of it. Think. Who _hasn’t_ had an elderly woman turn up on their doorstep asking for bread in exchange for tales? Who hasn’t met a ragged man in a bar telling of his strange misadventures at sea? And my kind, of course, all but live on stories. There’s plenty of room for us, if we can just find it. Whatever we tell will be shaped by the outer story, of course, but we should still have something to work with.’

 

Mary was looking at her with a calculating expression. ‘It’ll take some practice,’ she said. ‘And I don’t imagine we’ve got much time.’

 

Left to themselves, Janine thought, Mary and Irene and Sherlock would strategise and out-clever each other all night. She leaned forward. ‘You’d best start then, hadn’t you?’

**iv.**

Conversation continued while they started practicing. Martha, however, declined to join in. She didn’t think she was prepared to start reworking the nature of the world again, even for this.

 

‘I hate it,’ Sally said, abruptly, cupping her hands in front of her and producing a spark between them, that grew into a tiny fairy made of metal, that flapped its wings in a regular grinding beat. ‘I hate this, what we’ve found out, I…’

 

‘Astonishing, I’d have thought you’d be delighted to discover your world was being run by a psychopath,’ Sherlock said.

 

‘What do you hate?’ Molly said, ignoring Sherlock and looking at Sally with a kind of intently focused gentleness.

 

‘The whole –‘ Sally threw her arms out, and the fairy exploded in a ball of silver dust that scattered across the floor and grew into dozens of wands, each of them with a thick translucent stem that showed a battery sitting inside it. ‘The whole nature of Moriarty’s plan, how this works. People start to believe Sherlock’s a villain, and that perception changes the way the world is. Fine. Except people aren’t a fucking monolith, you can’t just – they’re never all going to think the exact same thing and any world that makes them is –‘ She shook her head, frustrated, catching at words. ‘I don’t buy it, but I have to because hey, here I am, that’s how it is, we can all see it. You’re so caught up in what Moriarty’s doing to you, Sherlock, but look what she’s doing to everyone else. She’s flattened every other human being on the planet but us to almost nothing so she can have her grand stand-off. Like they don’t mean anything outside of what they think of you. You and Jem Moriarty, centre of the fucking universe, _literally_.’ She waved her hands, and the wands dissolved.

 

‘You don’t need to flap your hands about,’ Irene said. ‘It’s brainwork.’ As she spoke, the lights dimmed, and a candle appeared, flickering, on the table. The candlelight made Martha think of the Forest, of time long past. She ran one of her wings across her cheek, felt its surface on her skin, dry on dry, impossibly soft against each other. She looked at Sally, gazing at Sherlock, mouth set, trying to make her understand why what she was saying mattered.

 

‘I don’t see how she could do it,’ Martha said, slowly. ‘I’m sure she couldn’t.’

 

Mary tilted her head to one side. ‘But she has,’ she said.

 

**v.**

‘It appears that way, but Sally’s right,’ Mrs. Hudson said, and Sally jumped, and looked over at where she sat half hidden by the angle of the light. ‘People aren’t like that. Not really. The Sea Story’s like that, and sometimes the birds, but people…it couldn’t be done. Not completely.’

 

‘What do you mean?’ Jo said, curiously, just as Sherlock said, with less patience, ‘What are you getting at?’

 

Mrs. Hudson smiled; Sally thought that possibly it was only her that could see it – Mrs. Hudson’s mouth was mostly in shadow, but from where Sally sat she could see the tip of it momentarily dart into the light, and then sink away again. ‘I mean that Moriarty might have mostly crushed the life out of all those people out there, made them into spelled things that only think about hating you, but there’s bound to be something left. Just a little instability in the world would be enough to free them.’

 

‘Instability?’ Sherlock said, pacing. ‘I still don’t see –‘

 

‘I do,’ Sally said. She started to raise her hand, then decided she’d try it without. She liked the hand movements, they helped her to understand the movement from inside her head to outside; the way the stories moved inside her head was not unlike the feel of the air against her hands when she swept and flicked them through it. Or perhaps it was more like water, the water running off her body that day she’d flailed out of the sea, bewildered by the furious pressure of the ground pushing up at flesh that didn’t yet know how to be hers.

 

But it couldn’t hurt to make sure she could do without the movements, if she had to. She did nothing with her body, only flicked her mind like a switch, and the candle roared into a filament that blasted light into every last bit of the room. ‘This isn’t just about you, Sherlock,’ she said. ‘I know I’m fond of saying that to you, but this time I don’t mean it as a rebuke. For once in your life, it’s not you making out that the world revolves around you. And hey, who knew, now that the universe is actually all about you, you don’t like it any more than I do.’

 

‘Have you got an actual plan, or –‘

 

‘Pay attention,’ Sally said, and almost laughed at how put out this made Sherlock look. ‘ _It’s not all about you._ ’

 

‘Yes, so you said –‘ Sherlock started, and, then, finally, Sally saw her get it. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see the general idea…Do you really think that will work?’

 

‘Not a clue,’ Sally said. ‘Could do, could get us all obliterated. Anyone else got a plan?’

 

There was silence. Then Mary said, urgently, ‘There’s no _time_. We’re done thinking. Sally, tell us what we need to do.’


	19. Chapter 19

**i.**

None of them knew, really, whether it was actually necessary to find Moriarty’s new form in this world to carry out what they meant to do, but Irene thought that it would be required for dramatic tension, and it would give them something to shape their stories around. In the end, they didn’t have far to look.

 

They walked through London, passing a platform where the mayor of Westminster was speaking to a crowd about the necessity of making dragon killers pay for their crimes, which they had to sneak around. After that, though, it was easy to get to the Forest, and once there the path twisted in front of them and took them to a clearing. And standing there, arms folded, looking thoroughly amused, was Jem Moriarty. John’s hands curled halfway to fists as she approached, and Moriarty caught that, and smirked.

 

‘Oh, Sherlock, you brought the whole gang,’ she said. ‘How sweet, you’ve learned how to play with others at long last. Big sister must be so confused. You do realise you’re just dragging them all down with you?’

 

Sherlock stepped ahead of the rest of them, and when John made to follow her, held out her hand. ‘And where is down, exactly?’ she said. ‘How does your story end?’

 

‘The way fairy tales are supposed to end, not that you’d know, here, what that means,’ Moriarty said. ‘You’re going to live happily ever after. By which I mean, of course, that you’re going to die.’

 

‘Not the traditional form that a Happily Ever After takes,’ Sherlock said.

 

‘You’ll never be bored again, that’s got to count for something,’ Moriarty said. ‘And naturally I’m going to kill your friends first, which means that before you die you’ll be alone and uncorrupted again.’

 

‘Naturally,’ Sherlock said, and John curled her fists tighter, and concentrated. She drew the magic lurking in the Forest towards her and reworked it, gave it new logic. And then she looked at Sherlock, and changed the world.

 

**ii.**

Janine was ready for the change, felt it happen. She was relieved to feel no tugging on her brain; only her clothes and the landscape shifted. Either it was true that only Moriarty could get her stories inside people’s heads, or Jo was simply choosing not to do it.

 

The clearing had been populated with little stone houses and a square with a fountain. Beyond the houses were mountains, with an enormous cave set into one of them, high on a cliff. Janine found herself sitting on a wall around a garden, wearing a brown dress, her hair coiled on her head, pointed hat nowhere to be seen.

 

More importantly, Sherlock now looked exactly as they’d hastily planned she should on the way here. She wore shining white armour and a streaming golden cape, her hair free of any helmet and fanning out to one side in the wind. Her sword, raised high, glittered dramatically. Janine listened as Irene had taught them all to listen, and heard:

 

_She had slain dragons and freed imprisoned maidens. She had completed every quest devised by every fiendish trickster, defeated every villain within a thousand miles. There was no hero on earth to rival Sherlock Holmes._

_Not all of her feats were understood. She had defeated a dragon, but the dragon in its cunning had misled the villagers nearby before it died, so that they were now angry. When a monster came to occupy the dragon’s abandoned cave, Sherlock hesitated over riding out to fight it, unwilling to cause harm if it were not needed. Then, however, it stole the mayor’s daughter, and Sherlock, in all her nobility, set out to rescue her despite all the cruelty the villagers had shown._

They’d concocted it hastily, and for a moment Janine was afraid that Moriarty would see straight through it, but she only snorted. ‘ _This_ is your plan?’ she said. ‘”Oh no story, Sherlock’s not a villain at all, she’s the best hero ever, honest”. I do admire you for trying, Jo, but you’re _laughably_ outmatched. Our genres are millimetres apart in places, and I understand them _both_ better than you do.’ She clicked her fingers, purely, Janine was sure, for effect.

 

And now Sherlock’s hair was straighter, but tousled, her skin a deader white, fangs protruding from her blood red lips. She had on a high collared lacy black dress and a crimson-lined cape. The distant mountain cave had been replaced by a craggy black castle.

 

 _The creature came at night, so the townsfolk said. They said it could ensnare you with its eyes and make you come away with it to its castle, where it would drain you of life. The townsfolk called it_ vampire. _It called itself_ Sherlock.

 

Sherlock moved towards Jo. She held her hands over her head, the sun apparently burning her, and Moriarty whispered clouds over the clearing. Then Sherlock strode, but silently. _The vampire can seduce any woman, the townspeople warned. It takes them and corrupts them and steals their lifeforce._ Sherlock had Jo’s hands in hers, and was leaning towards her neck.

 

Then Janine smiled, and slipped off the wall, and strolled across the square to where Mary was standing by a well, watching Sherlock with an expression of horror. ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Janine said. ‘Most of what they say’s nonsense. I should know.’

 

Mary turned to her, assuming an expression of surprise, and Moriarty frowned. _In fact it’s worse,_ Janine heard, and then the words were bubbles in her mouth, about to burst on her tongue, for a moment she was a girl in a village who’d been turned into a vampire – and then she caught Sally’s eye, and lasers filled her brain, blasting the words to pieces. ‘For one thing,’ Janine said, ‘she’s _rubbish_ at seducing women.’

 

Sherlock had frozen with her teeth above Jo’s neck, looking confused. _The vampire tried to fight her nature_ , came Moriarty’s story, _but could not resist her bloodlust._

‘She’s not interested in draining blood,’ Janine said. ‘She’s just kind of a dick. She bites people to turn them into things like her, not to kill them, and she only does it so she can study the process. Then they’re ashamed and run off into the mountains, that’s why you don’t see them again. She’s pretty awful, don’t get me wrong, but she’s really not as dangerous as you think. I’ve been to her castle. Do I look drained to you?’

Jo pulled back, pushing Sherlock away; Sherlock stumbled, then turned on Moriarty, looking alarmed and angry. ‘She’s not evil,’ Janine said, ‘Just lost. Doesn’t know what she needs. Bit pathetic, really.’

 

Moriarty was glancing from Jo to Sherlock, looking, now, slightly concerned. Janine glanced at Mary, and gave a tight nod.

 

**iii.**

_Night crept over the hall, sliding into its crevices, darkening its already shadowy depths. Sherlock Holmes slipped into a corner, and waited. Professor Moriarty would be here soon with the device, and then Holmes would strike._

‘Oh, I see, that’s your game?’ Moriarty said. ‘Bit cleverer than I’d originally thought. A _bit_ , mind you.’

 

Moriarty was in a lab coat now, and holding a briefcase. _The device that would give the whole population of the earth clean water. Holmes, an assassin who had been hired by a large water company, was to destroy it – and its inventor – by any means necessary._

No change in Sherlock’s appearance at that. Mary’s whole body wanted to shudder, a feeling she knew she got when she heard certain kinds of music that reminded her…well, never mind that. Something in this story was reminding her of some dark thing from her past that she carried in her. Her real past, the one Moriarty had taken from her. That made her angry, which made it easy to focus again, to think, _Or so the water company believed. Sherlock, deeply principled, had infiltrated them, had been playing an impossibly long game. She was bone weary. But one way or another, it would be over soon._

Moriarty’s head lifted, the dim light of the corridor glinting off her smooth, shiny hair. She stood in an archway, and Mary, though it was her own story, didn’t know who Moriarty was supposed to be. But then her form as the dragon had died, and she’d gone on; perhaps she could absent herself without doing herself damage. Mary envied her that trick, and the effortlessness with which she seemed to do it.

 

_The end of the corridor caved in and everyone there died._

It was horribly sudden. Afterwards, Mary didn’t know how she’d reacted fast enough to stop it. With the crushing weight centimetres from her, she thought _– or would have done, if they hadn’t thrown themselves to safety barely in time_ , and looked around to see them all just out of reach of the rubble. Sherlock, right at the other end of the corridor, didn’t have so much as dust on her; the rest of them were bruised and scraped from where bits of ceiling had bounced off them. And Moriarty was onto them. They had to be quick.

 

_Pretending to be an assassin for hire, Sherlock had lost more and more of herself. She didn’t know now whether the things she’d done to get here were justified by what she was trying to prevent, and she found, horribly – or it should have been horrible – that she no longer cared. All the years of death and relentless focus on her goal had worn the moral certainty that got her into this away to nothing, and now she had nothing left at all._

‘Sherlock,’ Mrs. Hudson said, and Sherlock jumped. ‘Surprised to see me here? But I trained you, all those years ago, before you left the service, not surprising that I’d take the chance, one last mission in the field before retirement, to see how you turned out.’ She looked appraisingly at her. ‘Or perhaps you never did leave. Tell me: are you really a traitor? Or is this deeper cover than we could ever have dreamed of?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ Sherlock whispered. ‘Oh God, I don’t know.’

 

‘Did you think it would be easy?’ Mrs. Hudson said, very gently, coming nearer to Sherlock and stroking her hair out of her eyes. ‘We left easy choices behind a long time ago. There never are any good answers once you get past the first week of training. No baddies to put bullets in, no goodies to save. Just you, alone, out on the edge, hoping you’re making things better rather than worse.’

 

That made Mary wince, deep below her skin. She didn’t know how much longer she could do this, but her turn was nearly done. She listened hard, and thought she heard someone far off thinking, _but what was she supposed to do? Killing the dragon was really wrong but it_ was _hurting people. I don’t know, I don’t know_ – and wrenched her mind away quickly, because the last thing they wanted was to draw Moriarty’s attention to what they were doing, but it might just be working, and Mrs. Hudson was still comforting Sherlock, still complicating the story in every way she could, and Moriarty didn’t quite see yet what they were doing but knew things weren’t proceeding smoothly and her mind snapped _The truth was (Sherlock turned her head away from her mentor) she enjoyed the killing, the way it made her feel._

‘I had to come too,’ Sally said, stepping forward. ‘I know we were always rivals in training, and to be honest I never liked you. But when I heard you were coming here…you aren’t the things you feel and you aren’t the things you’ve done. I don’t care about that, not right here and now. What matters now is what you’re going to do next.’

 

And as she said it Mary felt her mind dart out, quick as anything, and flick the story sideways. The weight of it lifted; Mary almost gasped. And the corridor and the rubble went molten around them and they were standing on a beach where every grain of sand was hard and gold, and the sea was full of metal creatures, watching the shore from a distance. The ground looked like light made solid, and Mary let herself sink gratefully towards it, and put assassins and shadows right out of her head.

 

  **iv.**

Sally felt worn through already; the idea of trying to sustain a story on top of everything made her want to crawl into the sea she’d just created and float and not think about anything. But she could feel the story beginning to creak, see Moriarty’s fingers lift very slightly as if about to go to her temple and then lower again. They were getting somewhere. Stop now and they wouldn’t get another chance.

 

_Sherlock’s mother had been a Liar, and her sister was now one too. The expectation had always been that Sherlock would follow the family tradition._

Sherlock was standing a little way away, staring out to sea with the eyes on her face and glancing around with the ones on her fingers. Sally glanced down at herself and saw what she expected: she was still human, and she was kneeling behind a large rock, out of Sherlock’s many-eyed sight. Good. The story was going as she meant, then.

 

_The truth was, though Sherlock recognised that it was necessary to have Liars, particularly for dealing with humans, she rather scorned the whole profession. She had been called blunt before, and she certainly didn’t relish the idea of not being permitted to speak her mind. Anyone could lie, but Liars weren’t allowed to tell the truth – this was because humans were incapable of telling the truth, and in order to engage with them it was important to have diplomats who learned to think like them. So Sherlock had rejected her family’s ways and sought out a different path. One who pursued the truth rather than turning away from it._

‘You’re still keeping this up?’ Moriarty said. She was sitting on the back of a metal dolphin-like creature, out at sea, and looking at Sally. ‘All of these little stories of yours are happening _inside_ my story, or had you forgotten? It’s impossible for you to overpower the wider narrative with trifling things going on within it. You haven’t succeeded once so far, why keep going?’ She sighed, and stroked the dolphin’s pointed slimy teeth. ‘I thought you – well, Sherlock – might come up with something better.’

 

Sally was about to reply, then swore silently. While she’d been listening, Moriarty had slipped story past her. _The truth was, Sherlock was a better liar than any of them. She hadn’t told the truth about anything, particularly herself, in years. But she didn’t see why she should do it in the stilted, controlled way that Mycroft did, lying for the government all day and then coming home to the truth. Instead, she had a much bigger lie in mind. People were weak, and stupid, like ironfish swimming around in their bowls, never dreaming…they’d be much better off listening to her. ‘The humans are invading,’ she practiced saying, looking out at the ocean, ‘and this is how I know…’_

Ah. They hadn’t guessed what kind of lie Moriarty would choose, had only been able to anticipate the broad turns that the story would take, not the details. This one was tricky, but Sally was confident that Molly could handle it.

 

‘Sherlock,’ Molly said, and Sherlock was yet again turning as if surprised, yet again looking at someone who her character wouldn’t have expected to see. Would Moriarty guess the pattern? Molly, like Sally, looked human, a visitor to the planet.

 

Sherlock nodded to her and said, ‘How are you finding it here?’

 

'I'm fine,' Molly said, kicking at the golden sand with the toe of her aerogel boot. 'Not sure I'm doing a great job as an ambassador, though. Your sister can talk rings around me. But then I'm not a diplomat, I'm just here as the scientific expert. No one expects brilliant oratory from me, but still...'

 

Sherlock knelt and reached into the water, pulling a metal foam urchin towards her and turning it in her hands, studying it, ignoring the way its spines twisted towards the skin of her palms and came dangerously close to her eyes.

 

'Mycroft still hasn't persuaded you to come to a session, I take it,' Molly said. It was clear she didn't really expect an answer, and when she didn't get one, she went on, 'I thought you weren't interested in the talks. But I saw you, when you thought no one was looking. You looked...I don't know. You reminded me of this guy I used to know. Horrible person, actually. Not that you're -'

 

'Molly,' Sherlock said, irritably, but Molly talked over her, her voice becoming a little quicker and higher. 'He didn't seem horrible. He just thought he wanted to be kind to people. He told people all sorts of stuff, to be kind to them, and in the end...well, never mind. I just always liked that you don't do that.'

 

'And yet I remind you of him,' Sherlock said, pressing a fingertip gently between two of the sea urchin's spines, then shrugging and tossing it back into the sea.

 

'I know you're up to something,' Molly said staunchly. 'And I have some ideas about what it is. Like I said, I've been watching you, and...sorry, that sounds creepy, I don't mean...it's just that…'

 

'Yes, I know why,' Sherlock said. Then Molly's words seemed to catch up with her properly, and she stood straight again, and looked at her. 'I haven't got any choice,' she said. 'If the war doesn't happen my way, it'll happen your way, the humans' way, and that will be worse for everyone. I know what I'm doing.'

 

Molly came nearer still, sand slipping about her boots, her armoured coat glinting in the pale light. 'There's got to be another way,' she said.

 

Sherlock looked fiercely at her, and then suddenly slumped. Her finger-eyes blinked, fluttered, and Molly watched them in apparent fascination. Sally shrank further into the shadows behind the rock. Moriarty manoeuvred her dolphin a little closer. Then Sherlock sat down abruptly and pushed her heels into the sand. 'No,' she said. 'The other way is a slow build up to war instead of a fast one, you winning, you taking everything we have apart. I know you don't think you want to invade but you don't see it as clearly as I do. You _will_ , once you understand us, or think you understand us. So yes, I've got plans, Molly, yes, I'm planning to spread a lie that will change everything. And all you have to do to stop it is give me a better idea.'

 

Moriarty was frowning. She looked over at Sally, and whispered, somehow audible, 'All right, I'll grant you, this is more interesting than I thought. But I don't quite...'

 

 _Hurry, Molly_ , Sally thought. _We need to move on. Keep ahead of her. She'll figure it out any minute now, and then..._

 

'Oh,' Molly said, her voice breaking a little. 'Oh.'

 

' _Oh_ ,' Sherlock agreed. She took up a handful of sand, let the grit get dangerously close to one eye, then allowed it to slide away. She met Molly's eyes. 'What are you going to do?'

 

Molly looked grave. She put a tentative hand on Sherlock's shoulder. 'What do you need me to do?' she said.

 

Where the hell was Irene? But Sally needn’t have worried. Even as she thought it she felt the story shift around her, very gently, a soft trickle of meaning in motion. It was just possible that Moriarty wouldn’t even notice.

 

**v.**

_Sherlock’s body was murmuring at her, every bit of it, from her eyes to her sand-hot toes to her stomach-suckers to her ovipositors. She wanted to tell it to shut up, but she knew that it might be trying to tell her something that mattered; it did do that sometimes, and she reluctantly accepted that fact._

From where Irene stood, well out of sight of the beach, she couldn’t even see Sherlock, but she could feel her, in the same way that she could feel the others, and Moriarty of course, and the people in the town, their thoughts gradually opening as the weight of Moriarty’s story lifted a fraction at a time.

 

_She was a liar (a thing far worse than a Liar), she was obsessive and arrogant and controlling. She looked at the human girl in front of her and knew all the ways to hurt her. And then she stared, horrified, into her own eyes, face and fingers matching each other in their widening, because the idea of hurting Molly Hooper made her sad._

 

‘Really, Sally? Of all the angles to take, you chose _sentiment_? Sherlock Holmes is a hero because she _cares?_ And why little Molly? Not the obvious choice, you must admit,’ Irene heard – or felt – Moriarty say, somewhere over near or on the sea. Good, she hadn’t noticed the change in narrator. Nor had she realised what they were up to, though it wouldn’t be long now.

 

_The idea of certain other things, on the other hand, made her…not sad. Molly, for example, had mentioned a human pastime of interaction between faces known as kissing, and the idea of kissing Molly was not…without interest._

‘That’s just nonsense,’ Moriarty said, scathingly. _The truth was, of course, that this was the best way to manipulate Molly, to ensure she told no one about Sherlock’s plan._

Irene smiled. _Sherlock told herself that, and for a moment nearly believed it. But it was no use. It wasn’t love, this, she wouldn’t weep when Molly returned to earth. But at this particular moment she felt the two oppressive sentiments of not wanting a person to be harmed and wanting to touch them._

**vi.**

Molly had rather been dreading this bit; it was one thing to consider yourself entirely over somebody and another to go on being over them while they were kissing you. But actually, it was nice, not something she’d ever in a million years thought kissing Sherlock Holmes would be. A bit less hot than she’d expected – though still extremely hot, obviously – and a lot less terrifying. It helped, of course, that none of this was real.

 

_Sherlock drew back, satisfied. Yes, the feelings had been real, she admitted it. But she could have put them aside, had they not suited her purpose. At her core, she knew, she was still icy, and that pleased her._

‘You haven’t told me what you need from me,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll help you if I can.’

 

_What help could she be, Sherlock wondered, and at once knew the answer. She wasn’t needed. Sherlock could do this better alone. And she would be far safer without Molly watching her. And the sea was right there._

Molly kissed Sherlock again, and Sherlock drew back. ‘You need to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Get off this planet before I…I can’t have you here and knowing what you know, you must see that. And I don’t want to hurt you.’

 

‘I know you don’t,’ Molly said. ‘And I know more than you, because I also know you’re not going to.’

 

Sherlock made to push her, then drew back, expression agonised. ‘You think that’s a good thing, don’t you?’ she said. ‘You think, _oh she’s not so cold after all._ Even though it’s a weakness that could cost thousands of people their lives. Detachment is necessary sometimes, Molly. I used to be capable of it.’

 

‘Oh,’ Moriarty said, her eyes opening very wide, and Molly saw understanding creeping there and knew they were about to be out of time, and they were already out of stories. She’d had the final piece of the puzzle and she’d failed and now –

 

The sea frothed and turned burgundy. The sky went dark.

 

  **vii.**

Martha hadn’t wanted to do this, but her choices had narrowed. _Keep Moriarty guessing_ was their sole strategy, and the game had been about to come to an end before they were ready.

 

She hadn’t even had time to plan the story, so now she had to follow it up, and see what she’d told.

 

They were back in the clearing. There was a little cabin there now, and Sherlock was stood outside it, dripping in blood. Jo was in the clearing with her; the rest of them, including Moriarty, were in the woods. Martha glanced round the others and saw they were all alarmingly young, and a glance down at herself proved she had joined them. She didn’t like that, somehow. Moriarty was the youngest of all, looking no more than sixteen or seventeen, and she was holding a knife.

 

Time to take control. She’d had no practice at this, but somehow when the moment had come the way of doing it had been…obvious. Hopefully the next stage would be as well. She brought herself backwards, made herself teller rather than told, and thought, _Sherlock reached out and took Jo’s hand. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I killed her. Oh God, I killed her. But I had no choice.’_

_The last six hours were a horrible, violent blur. They’d woken to find two of their friends dead in their beds, and since then those of them that remained had been running and hiding – until the moment it became obvious that there was no one here but them, and they’d realised in horror that the killer was among their number. But Sherlock, brilliant even in terror, had at last worked out who it was._

There was a stirring, a sound beside Martha. She looked and saw Moriarty rocking back on her heels, and smiling. _‘We’re safe now,’ Jo said, hugging Sherlock. ‘You’re amazing.’_

_And behind her back, Sherlock’s free hand gripped the knife._

Focus, focus. If she slipped up – if Moriarty took control for too long, then Jo…

 

_The killer was the friend who’d invited them to the cabin, Jem –_

_– or so Sherlock had tried to tell herself, shutting away the part of her brain that wasn’t bound by the fetters she kept on the rest of it. But it had been too much, in the end –_

No, no. Martha looked away from her young, strange hands, fixed her eyes on a tree and her mind on the tale and pushed Moriarty’s world back again.

 

_\- and it was letting that part of herself loose that had allowed Sherlock to kill the killer. Now she felt sick with what she’d done, and why she’d done it. For the truth was that when Sherlock had confronted Jem with the truth the girl had broken down crying and thrown her knife away. The truth was that the two girls she’d killed had been emotionally tormenting her for years and one day she’d snapped, and now she couldn’t bear it. Sherlock hadn’t killed her because she deserved to die. She’d killed her because mid-sobbing Jo had come into the room and Jem had flinched and panicked and thrown her knife straight at her. Jo had seen the knife before she saw either Jem or Sherlock, thrown herself out of the room and run, getting only a flesh wound, but Sherlock couldn’t stop thinking about what had almost happened, what she’d almost lost, and her hands had fastened around Jem’s neck…_

‘You killed her,’ Jo said, drawing back, gazing at Sherlock in horror. ‘You killed her for me.’

 

‘I love you,’ Sherlock said, trying to reach for her again, but Jo moved further away. Then she froze, shook her head, laughed unhappily, and walked forward again. They stepped into each other’s arms.

 

Moriarty was staring at Martha now. ‘What kind of heroism is that?’ she said, and then a high, horrible sound left her throat. ‘No,’ she said. ‘ _No_.’

 

And Martha listened, they all listened, and heard the cacophony in the kingdom in the outer story.

 

_She was right to kill the dragon, it was hurting people. She was wrong to kill the dragon, dragons are rare and special. We’re deciding the value of a life based on how common it is now? What matters is the girls. The girls wanted to go. Not all of them. Arguably the evil is that which made them feel so trapped that a dragon was their only way out. She killed the dragon to protect her friends, out of love, that’s admirable. That’s selfish. She killed it because she cared about the kingdom. She didn’t care. It doesn’t matter if she cared, the results are what matter, not the intention. She lied and said she was sacrificing herself. So? She had to. She didn’t have to. This isn’t the only news that’s important, you know, we’re focusing too much on this. What could be more important?_

‘Please don’t,’ Moriarty said, so sad and so small and Martha felt like she was falling into the ground because she saw what she hadn’t realised, that the story wasn’t breaking but rather swelling, that they’d inflated it to something that could not fit within the world as Moriarty had made it. She realised it was unlikely that Moriarty would survive this.

 

And she wanted to stop. She had never wanted anything so little as to continue. But she thought of the life she remembered and how patchy and strange it was, like a dream, she thought of the people in the kingdom and how Moriarty had all but killed them without a thought. She thought of the sky, and everything outside it that had been taken from them.

 

She could stop it, still, could see how it might be done. Her eyes were hot with tears, and she forced herself to keep looking at Moriarty, and did nothing. 


	20. Chapter 20

**i.**

They’re in Baker Street, in the living room.

 

It is enormous, it is far too small for them all. John’s body is agonisingly heavy and the ground under her unsettlingly light. Everything is wrong. Molly is on the ground, arms wrapped around her; Sally’s hands are gripping a chair arm tightly; Mrs. Hudson is standing very straight, fingers moments from the wall in case she should need the support.

 

Moriarty is not dead. She’s standing, surrounded by them all, blood trickling from her temples, and of them all only her eyes are focused. Furious. She moves before any of them can react, a snake turning, vaults herself clean through the window with a glittering cascade of glass that in John’s confusion sounds like a scream. It’s unbearable. Not one of them manages to move to follow her; their bodies are still lost to them.

 

Janine – lying face down on the ground, slowly pushing herself up on shaking arms – is the first to remember how to talk. ‘Nice one,’ she says, blearily, and John thinks she knows what those words mean. Her own name has come back to her, and those of the people around her. She wonders what else is still to come back, and whether she’ll notice if it doesn’t.

 

‘We won?’ Molly says, lifting her head from her arms then immediately letting it drop. ‘Yes, we did, didn’t we? Something or other.’

 

‘People will think we’re hungover,’ Janine said, and giggled. Hungover? Oh, yes. John stroked her own hair, finding it vaguely soothing, then forced herself to snap out of it. Only do things John Watson would do. Remember who she is, now she’s not being told and has to write herself again. That’s the thing now.

 

‘Can you all go?’ Sherlock says, then adds, ‘That is to say, it isn’t a question of ingratitude, it’s only –‘

 

‘Don’t,’ Sally cuts in quickly. ‘We’ve had too many shocks, we won’t survive you thanking us. I think we could all do with getting home. Though I don’t think any of us should be alone just yet.’

 

John watches them form groups; Mary and Janine, walking close, studying each other. Sally, brushing a gentle thumb past Irene’s flickery eyelashes, Irene smiling with a softness John didn’t know her mouth had in it. Mrs. Hudson’s arm around Molly.

 

And then it’s just the two of them again.

 

‘John,’ Sherlock says, and John’s stomach swoops, because the name’s a reminder, of course, that not everything that happened in the stories was a lie.

 

And John wonders if perhaps she knows what Sherlock’s about to say.

 

‘I know this isn’t what matters,’ Sherlock says. ‘And that it’s unlikely to be the first thing on your mind at the moment. But it…’

 

‘Matters to you,’ John says. Her hands are stiff and all her muscles are sore; she’s been moving differently, her body not quite her own. She’s worn down in every way she can imagine being worn, but she can’t walk away from this.

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock says. ‘Enormously. I don’t want to think of anything between us having been…damaged, by anything that occurred. I know it was just a story.’

 

‘And I know it wasn’t,’ John says. ‘And come on, Sherlock, so do you.’

 

Sherlock shakes her head, and folds herself into her chair. ‘I think it would be better if we thought of it that way,’ she says.

 

‘Is that what you want?’ John asks.

 

Sherlock looks miserable, openly, unguardedly miserable. It’s…sickening, actually, and John doesn’t know what her own face is doing in response but it can’t be good. And yet – and yet – the openness of it is – and Sherlock isn’t answering, of course. Until at last she does: ‘You say it wasn’t just a story. Maybe not _just._ But it _was_ a story. You know it’s not that neat here. Things hurt differently, and we can’t just – yes, all right, perhaps I’m in love with you, but what does it matter? That won’t stop me doing you harm; it never did. And it certainly won’t repair what’s already been done.’

 

And John’s swooping again, giddy, lost, almost certainly not making rational decisions. And yet what other decision _is_ there? ‘Get up,’ she says, and Sherlock does, and that is…’I don’t know if I can say what you just said,’ John admits. ‘But I have thought about it. I think we should…you know. Go on with what we were doing, in the story. All of that.’

 

'Could be dangerous,' Sherlock says, without taking her eyes off John’s face. 'Could be exhausting, brutal and ultimately emotionally devastating.'

 

‘I know,’ John says, and despite it all she’s walking towards Sherlock. ‘I know, but the alternative’s worse, isn’t it?’

 

‘I’ve been dealing with the alternative for months,’ Sherlock says. She hesitates. ‘Years.’

 

John can’t think about that right now, or she doesn’t know what she’ll do. So she takes another step forward, and says, ‘So then you know it’s worse.’

 

‘Worse than _what_?’ Sherlock says. ‘Living happily ever after? You saw what that means –‘

 

‘No,’ John assures her. ‘I don’t think we’re cut out for that. But are we really _not_ going to –‘

 

Sherlock lets out a tight, painful-sounding breath and says, ‘No. My self-control in this area is – I haven’t had to refine it, if you don’t stop it I won’t –‘ and that’s it, that’s the end of it; tomorrow they’ll talk again and maybe John will say the things they both know she needs to say and maybe she won’t. Maybe it’ll get worse and not better. She hopes not, but it doesn’t matter, because not kissing Sherlock now is unthinkable and _Sherlock thinks John not kissing her is unthinkable too_ and there aren’t any words for what that means or does to John anyhow so why go looking for them, why do anything but –

 

**ii.**

 

Discipline was always Mycroft’s word, but that doesn’t mean Sherlock’s not aware of its value. Discipline and, within that, disciplines, for knowledge control, to make the vast pounding plurality of the world tolerable.

[And so she comes to this, to a woman looking at her and a bed and the artificial light of the bulb snapped out, leaving only the artificial light of the streetlamps outside, and knowledge pouring into her unchecked. She has to hold it together somehow, or fall apart herself.]

 

One might approach this in terms of Biology. That, of course, is the obvious way. Here are my limbs and here are hers and this is the name for where her fingers are and this is the name for where my mouth is and here are the words for what we are doing to each other and why. But it’s no good, that becomes obvious quickly. What about the slightly too-hard press of John’s fingertips into Sherlock’s hips? The contrast of the tentative, gentle positioning of them, fingertips only and nothing else on her, and how they push as if trying to get through her skin, how they hurt, perhaps Biology could help, perhaps there are words for that and for breath on the ear shaped like the word _extraordinary_ but soundless and for the infuriating tickle of hair across the neck, but she can’t remember them, she can’t even remember whether they exist.

 

Chemistry? Always where she’s most comfortable, she should have started there, with oxytocin and adrenaline, and here she does better, knows where she is, there are always words for the alchemical tricks and transformations the body plays on itself with no regard for the consequences, but then again perhaps Physics would be better in its grim acceptance of the smallness and vastness the world is capable of, that this is about the same things everything else in the world is about, energy and mass and violence between particles. It doesn’t worry over this feeling of having a warm body in your arms and feeling sick with affection for every damn thing about her, for getting lost in the unnecessarily exhausting fact that her eyelashes are separate from her bravery and Sherlock is in love with both of them.

[Then, of course, she has to consider that they aren’t separate at all, that that is rather the point, and that could break her if she let it. Better to think about atoms and force. But discipline of any kind is rapidly running out.]

 

To be touched like this outside a story – John’s mouth moving from place to place on her body, she means to see if she can predict where it’ll land next but for a terrible, addictive moment all she thinks is a sound – to be touched like this by John who previous calculations made clear would never do this – to be held and touched – to think of this and very little else, her thoughts almost linear, like a ribbon like a banner like a current of water, but then she never needed metaphors like this.

 

To touch is another thing entirely, and harder to think about, even though of course she’s thought about it all but nightly for longer than

[She won’t think about that now. John would see it on her face.]

but how can she think about touching while doing it without shattering entirely? John’s skin has texture and temperature of its own, Sherlock cannot hold it in her head and against her body, she keeps them separate and the shock of the connection now is hurting her and John doesn’t like to see her hurt and Sherlock doesn’t mind most kinds of pain necessarily but this is new which makes it most more interesting and admittedly more painful. There’s too much and too many and too – her mind becomes a sound again, it becomes

 

[It’s like – is it like anything? Like sitting in the back of the car on a long drive twenty, thirty years ago and the light was a certain way and she understood for the first time that she could look at the sky or look at the fields and whichever she chose she would never be able to look at the other at this precise time under these precise circumstances again. Or not like that, because the car carried her away before the end of the thought, and she never had to decide?

    {If my hands are on her hands they aren’t on her chest, and if my mouth is on her mouth it’s not on her neck. So far, so obvious. But I can’t contain it; I imagine it only takes practice, but then of course the question becomes whether I want it to get any better or would rather it kept getting worse}

Does it need to be like anything? Finding connections is what she does, this because this therefore this and this, and when there’s nothing left to find the world goes dull and she thought John at first a live-in mystery, a beautifully contradictory and self-concealing thing who’d provide a thousand hours of not-boredom but it’s rare to be so wrong without technically a single in accuracy, nothing but the truth and an awful lot she didn’t and still doesn’t understand left over, spilling over the top of the calculation and leading, eventually, here. But no, she won’t say they were always going to end up here, she knows very well the fragility of this, how unlikely it was. Perhaps one day she’ll tell John how lucky she feels, naturally with an aside about how embarrassing it is to say such a thing. Perhaps she should save it for a day when she needs to apologise; she knows there’ll be a lot of those.

    {Here I am, already planning what to do about hurting you later. I don’t think that would surprise you, but I have been wrong so many times where you’re concerned. With you here with me like this it’s easy to forget that I ever want anything else but of course I want things that hurt you and even wanting you isn’t safe, but you’ve made it clear so many times that safe is intolerable to you whether you want it or not.

 

‘Sherlock,’ you say. It’s the first word you’ve said in a while, though perhaps some of what weren’t words meant the same thing, a thought that has me saying your name in return, and that makes you loud again, and smiling between gasps.

 

I tried to tell you once about the sky, about appreciating the useless, about the necessity of separating knowledge and desire, rational and irrational. I looked down from the sky and there you were. You’d killed for me and giggled about it, you’d called me extraordinary, you’d moved in with me and stayed. I looked at you and didn’t understand yet that the walls of my compartments were dissolving, that the borders I’d made between the stars and the work, between poisons and music had always been flimsier than I thought and you would walk through them without ever even noticing they were there. I knew I was trying to tell you something, and wasn’t half as troubled as I should have been by the fact that I didn’t know what.

 

Later I was amazed by how many stars we’d been able to see, how odd that was for London, and more amazed by how I hadn’t even thought of that at the time. No stars tonight, but light pollution is beautiful in its own grubbier clutching way, light that means people and not space. The lamp outside our window is part of it, and the one down the street. In a way that makes the lamplight on the bed more appropriate than starlight. When I finally have to shut my eyes it remains behind them, pressed there by the weight of your mouth against my eyelids.


End file.
